AMERICANS 


AMERICANS 


BY 

STUART  P.  SHERMAN 

AUTHOR  OF    "  MATTHEW   ARNOLD,"    "  ON   CONTEMPORARY   LITERATURE,"    ETC. 


J 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Published  November,  1922 


TO 
R.  M.  S. 


2033108 


PREFACE 

If  this  book  fulfils  in  any  degree  the  intention  of 
its  author,  its  tendency  will  be  to  encourage  readers 
to  keep  open  the  channels  of  their  national  traditions 
and  to  scrutinize  contemporary  literature  in  the  light 
of  their  national  past.  I  am  aware  of  the  current 
feeling  that  no  national  past  will  bear  scrutiny.  At 
the  present  time,  there  appears  to  be  no  "popular" 
nation  anywhere  in  the  world,  and  the  feelings  with 
which  many  people  regard  any  encouragement  of 
"nationalistic  sentiment,"  either  at  home  or  abroad, 
are  as  curiously  mixed  as  those  which  the  ancients 
entertained  towards  the  daughter  of  Tyndareus, 
that  beautiful  and  dangerous  woman  whose  fame 
has  outlasted  all  their  empires. 

The  old  bard  Stesichorus,  we  are  told,  for 
reviling  Helen  was  stricken  blind;  but  he  after 
wards  "unsaid  all  the  evil  he  had  sung  of  her,"  and 
accepted  a  legendary  account  according  to  which 
Helen  was  never  actually  in  Troy  but  only  her 
phantasm,  while  she  herself,  miraculously  trans 
ported  to  Egypt,  there  awaited  the  return  of  her 
lord.  Euripides  based  his  Helen  upon  this  story. 

Virgil's  treatment  of  the  character  exhibits  the 
same  sense  of  a  perilous  impiety  in  any  attempt  to 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

molest  her.  During  the  sack  of  Troy,  while  Aeneas 
was  wandering  desperately  among  the  flaming  relics 
of  his  city,  he  espied  the  seductive  cause  of  all  that 
woe,  cowering  on  the  threshold  of  a  temple,  a  silent, 
terror-stricken  fugitive.  To  the  beauty  that  had 
launched  a  thousand  ships  his  anguish  made  him 
blind.  The  smoke  of  a  world  in  ruins  smarted  in  his 
eyes.  Hot  wrath  possessed  him.  Though  he  knew 
there  was  no  glory  to  be  had  from  slaying  a  woman, 
it  seemed  to  him  "very  stuff  of  the  conscience"  to  end 
that  hateful  life.  He  clutched  his  sword.  In  the 
instant,  his  divine  mother  appeared  to  him,  stayed 
his  hand,  and  assured  him  that  the  real  cause  of 
the  war  was  not  Helen  but  the  inclementia  divum, 
the  merciless  will  of  the  gods. 

Many  intellectuals  look  malignly  upon  nation 
alism  as  the  baleful  Helen  of  our  recent  interna 
tional  disaster.  Through  the  smoke  of  the  conflict 
they  thought  they  heard  an  angel  with  vials  of 
wrath  crying:  "There  shall  be  no  more  flags  1"  As 
an  act  of  the  higher  piety,  holding  nothing  sacred 
which  is  less  than  Humanity,  they  dedicated  them 
selves  to  the  destruction  in  themselves  and  in  others 
of  all  those  complex  beliefs  and  emotions  which 
the  waving  flag  of  one's  land  stirs  in  the  heart  of 
the  ordinary  man.  The  war  multiplied  the  number 
of  refined  young  liberals,  American,  English, 
Jewish,  French,  Italian,  who  in  the  confidences  of 
the  midnight  hour,  aflame  with  the  "higher  piety," 


PREFACE  ix 

conscientiously  spit  upon  what  they  would  call  the 
time-dishonored  notion  that,  in  certain  circum 
stances,  it  is  sweet  and  beautiful  to  die  for  one's 
country.  In  order  to  become  men,  in  the  higher 
sense  of  the  word,  our  disillusioned  youth  imagine 
they  must  slay  the  thing  they  loved — they  must  cease 
to  be  Americans. 

It  was  about  the  year  1917  that  I  began  to 
meditate  rather  frequently  upon  the  relation  be 
tween  civilization  and  the  existence  of  separate 
nationalities,  national  traditions,  national  senti 
ments,  and  the  national  literatures  through  which 
the  life  of  vanished  generations  survives  as  a 
living  power  among  the  powers  of  the  present  day. 
That  sense  for  Humanity  above  all  nations,  which 
was  quickened  by  certain  appeals  of  the  war,  it 
seemed  to  me  that  every  intelligent  man  must 
applaud,  and  must  desire  to  strengthen.  Senti 
ments  which  interfered  with  the  growth  of  this 
sense,  I  thought,  should  be  suppressed,  and  sacri 
fices  which  must  be  made  for  the  extension  of  it 
should  be  courageously  offered.  An  inflamed  and 
egotistical  nationalism  appeared  to  me,  as  to  so 
many  others,  the  prime  cause  of  the  world's 
catastrophe. 

And  yet  if  even  for  a  moment  it  occurred  to  me 
that  true  citizenship  in  "the  country  of  all  intelli 
gent  beings"  might  necessitate  the  sacrifice  of  one's 
essential  Americanism  and  the  use  of  the  knife  at 


x  PREFACE 

the  root  of  all  fond  sentiments  related  to  it,  in  that 
instant  there  came  to  me,  as  if  in  a  vision,  our 
"divine  mother,"  the  spirit  of  America  as  the  clear- 
eyed  among  our  poets  and  statesmen  have  seen  her, 
assuring  me  that  the  higher  piety  demands  no  such 
immolation.  That  which  we  have  loved  in  our 
country,  she  declared,  that  which  we  have  honored 
in  her,  that  which  reveals  her  to  our  hearts  as 
proudly  beautiful  is  in  no  way  dangerous  to 
Humanity.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  deeply  we 
loved  the  true  constituent  elements  of  her  loveli 
ness,  the  more  clearly  we  understood  her  inmost 
purposes  and  set  ourselves  to  further  them,  the 
more  perfectly  we  should  find  ourselves  in  accord 
with  the  "friends  of  mankind"  in  all  nations. 

Shall  we  shun  music  because  we  know  that 
barbaric  music  arouses  the  cave-man  in  us  and  sets 
the  pulses  throbbing,  the  feet  dancing,  to  the 
"blood-lust  song" — forgetting  that  music  of 
another  sort,  seizing  upon  these  same  impression 
able  quivering  senses  of  ours,  may  masteringly 
attune  us  to  the  most  harmonious  impulses  of  our 
nature?  Because  we  fear  the  tom-toms  shall  we 
smash  the  cathedral  organ?  All  things  which  have 
great  power  are  greatly  dangerous  till  they  are  con 
trolled  to  right  ends;  but  they  are  not  more 
dangerous  than  weak  things  put  in  a  place  where 
strength  is  required.  At  the  present  moment  the 
isolated  individuals  and  scattered  bands  of  pale- 


PREFACE  xi 

browed  intellectuals  striving  to  realize  at  once  "the 
federation  of  the  world"  by  the  renunciation  of 
their  nationalities — these  are  weak  things  where 
great  strength  is  required. 

The  most  powerful  instruments  yet  existing  in  the 
world  for  the  destruction  of  international  order 
are  the  nations ;  yet  they  are  still  the  most  powerful 
instruments  for  creating  it.  The  most  powerful 
agents  for  the  corruption  of  the  world's  civilization 
are  corrupt  national  civilizations;  yet  they  are  still 
the  most  powerful  redemptive  agents.  Power  is 
the  good  which  the  world  craves.  We  cannot 
afford  to  waste  it  or  to  turn  away  from  it.  The 
friends  of  Humanity  will  make  less  progress  by 
attempting  to  destroy  the  national  spirit  than  by 
criticizing  it  and  purifying  it,  and  by  seizing  upon 
and  fostering  those  elements  in  it  which  are  truly 
humane.  With  this  program  in  mind  no  wise 
student  of  the  national  past  will  be  an  indis- 
criminating  upholder  of  traditions.  While  seeking 
to  conserve  their  vital  energy,  he  will  steadily 
subject  their  direction  to  a  critical  scrutiny  in  the 
best  light  of  his  own  time. 

The  studies  in  this  book,  though  originally  pub 
lished  separately  as  occasion  offered,  all  had  their 
origin  in  a  fresh  interest  in  American  life  and  let 
ters,  which  has  strengthened  side  by  side  with  a 
strengthening  interest  in  the  cause  of  those  young 
men  to  whom  the  war  brought  a  new  vision  of  the 


xii  PREFACE 

old  Humanitas.  Some  years  ago,  while  preparing 
a  book  on  Matthew  Arnold,  I  found  in  his  letters 
a  passage  which  I  read  with  pleasure  and  envy.  It 
was  written  when  he  was  putting  together  the  first 
volume  of  his  Essays  In  Criticism:  "I  think  the 
moment  is,  on  the  whole,  favorable  for  the  Essays ; 
and  in  going  through  them  I  am  struck  with  the 
admirable  riches  of  human  nature  that  are  brought 
to  light  in  the  group  of  persons  whom  they  treat, 
and  the  sort  of  unity  that  as  a  book  to  stimulate  the 
better  humanity  in  us  the  volume  has."  The 
"admirable  riches  of  human  nature"  are,  I  am 
sure,  also  present  in  my  group  of  Americans,  and 
something  I  hope  of  this  unity,  may  also  be  found 
here. 

For  permission  to  reprint  these  revised  essays 
acknowledgments  are  due  as  follows:  to  the  New 
York  Times  Book  Review  for  the  Mr.  Mencken 
And  The  New  Spirit  In  Letters',  to  the  Bookman 
for  Tradition',  to  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  for  the 
essay  on  Franklin  from  The  Cambridge  History 
Of  American  Literature',  to  Harcourt,  Brace,  and 
Co.  for  the  essay  on  Emerson  from  my  edition  of 
Essays  And  Poems  Of  Emerson',  to  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons  for  the  Hawthorne  and  the  Walt 
Whitman  from  my  editions  of  The  Scarlet  Letter 
and  Leaves  Of  Grass  in  the  Modern  Student's 
Library;  to  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  for  the  bio 
graphical  essay  on  Joaquin  Miller  from  a  forth- 


PREFACE  xiii 

coming  collective  edition  of  Miller's  poems;  to  the 
newly  erected  Step  Ladder  for  the  Note  on  Carl 
Sandburg-,  to  The  New  York  Nation  for  the  essays 
on  Carnegie,  Roosevelt,  and  the  Adamses;  and  to 
the  Weekly  Review  for  An  Imaginary  Conversa 
tion  with  Mr.  P.  E.  More. 

S.  P.  S. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

L     MR.  MENCKEN,  THE  JEUNE  FILLE,  AND  THE 

NEW  SPIRIT  IN  LETTERS I 

II.    TRADITION..  IT 

\ 

III.  FRANKLIN  AND  THE  AGE  OF  ENLIGHTENMENT    28 

IV.  THE  EMERSONIAN  LIBERATION 63 

V.     HAWTHORNE:   A  PURITAN   CRITIC   OF  PURI 
TANISM 122 

VI.     WALT  WHITMAN 153 

'VII.     JOAQUIN  MILLER:  POETICAL  CONQUISTADOR 

OF  THE  WEST 186 

VIII.  A  NOTE  ON  CARL  SANDBURG 239 

IX.  ANDREW  CARNEGIE 246 

X.  ROOSEVELT  AND  THE  NATIONAL  PSYCHOLOGY  256 

XI.  EVOLUTION  IN  THE  ADAMS  FAMILY 288 

XII.     AN    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATION    WITH    MR. 

P.  E.  MORE 316 


MR.  MENCKEN,  THE  JEUNE  FILLE,  AND 
THE  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  LETTERS 

A  woman  whose  husband  has  made  money  in  the 
war  likes  to  have  her  portrait  painted  and  her 
friends  coming  in  to  admire  it.  So  a  new  public, 
grown  conscious  of  itself,  demands  a  new  literature 
and  a  new  literature  demands  a  new  criticism.  Fine 
gentlemen  with  a  touch  of  frost  above  the  temples, 
sitting  at  ease  in  quiet  old  clubs  under  golden-brown 
portraits  of  their  ancestors,  and  turning  the  pages 
of  the  AtheneBum  or  Mr.  More's  Nation,  have  seen 
with  disdainful  yet  apprehensive  glance  through 
plate-glass  windows  the  arrival  of  all  three:  the 
formation  of  a  reading  public  of  which  they  are  not 
a  part,  the  appearance  of  a  literature  which  they  do 
not  care  to  read,  the  development  of  a  criticism  in 
which  their  views  are  not  represented.  Since  a  critic 
is  of  no  importance  except  with  reference  to  what 
he  criticizes,  you  will  please  bear  with  me  while  I 
bring  in  the  new  literature  and  the  new  readers. 
When  the  stage  is  properly  set,  Mr.  Mencken  will 
appear. 

How  shall  one  indicate  the  color  and  spirit  of 

l 


2  AMERICANS 

it? — this  new  public  now  swarming  up  the  avenues 
of  democratic  opportunity;  becoming  prosperous, 
self-conscious,  voluble;  sunning  itself  in  the  great 
cities;  reaching  out  greedily  to  realize  its  "legiti 
mate  aspirations."  This  latest  generation  of  Amer 
icans,  so  vulgar  and  selfish  and  good-humored  and 
sensual  and  impudent,  shows  little  trace  of  the  once 
dominant  Puritan  stock  and  nothing  of  the  Puritan 
temper.  It  is  curiously  and  richly  composed  of  the 
children  of  parents  who  dedicated  themselves  to 
accumulation,  and  toiling  inarticulately  in  shop  and 
field,  in  forest  and  mine,  never  fully  mastered  the 
English  definite  article  or  the  personal  pronoun.  It 
is  composed  of  children  whose  parents  or  grand 
parents  brought  their  copper  kettles  from  Russia, 
tilled  the  soil  of  Hungary,  taught  the  Mosaic  law 
in  Poland,  cut  Irish  turf,  ground  optical  glass  in 
Germany,  dispensed  Bavarian  beer,  or  fished  for 
mackerel  around  the  Skagerrack.  The  young  peo 
ple  laugh  at  the  oddities  of  their  forbears,  discard 
the  old  kettles,  the  Mosaic  Law,  the  provincial  dia 
lect,  the  Lutheran  pastor.  Into  the  new  society 
breaking  without  cultural  inheritance,  they  derive 
all  their  interests  and  standards  from  their  imme 
diate  environment,  and  gravitate  towards  refinement 
through  more  and  more  expensive  gratifications  of 
the  senses. 

The  prettiest  type  of  this  swift  civilization — and 
I  must  have  something  pretty  to  enliven  a  discourse 
on  current  criticism — the  prettiest  type  is  the  jeune 


MR.  MENCKEN  3 

fille,  who,  to  modernize  the  phrase  of  an  old  poet, 
aspires  to  a  soul  in  silken  hosiery  and  doeskin  boots. 
She  springs,  this  young  creature  with  ankles 
sheathed  and  shod  like  a  Virginia  deer — ankles 
whose  trimness  is,  aesthetically  speaking,  quite  the 
finest  thing  her  family  has  produced  in  America — 
she  springs  from  a  grandmother  who  clumped  out 
in  wooden  shoes  to  milk  a  solitary  cow  in  Sweden. 
She  has  no  soul,  the  young  thing,  but  she  trusts  that 
the  tailor,  the  milliner,  the  bootmaker,  the  mani 
curist,  the  hairdresser,  and  the  masseuse  can  give 
her  an  equivalent.  Wherever  art  can  work  on  her 
surfaces,  she  is  finished.  When  the  car  is  at  the 
door  in  the  morning — "a  distinctive  body  on  a  distin 
guished  chassis" — and  she  runs  down  the  steps  with 
somewhat  more  than  a  flash  of  her  silken  perfec 
tions,  she  is  exquisite,  what  though  the  voice  is  a  bit 
hard  and  shrill  with  which  she  calls  out,  "H'lo, 
kiddo!  Le's  go't  Brentano's." 

She  is  indeed  coming — the  new  reader !  She  will 
bring  home  an  armful  of  magazines,  smelling  deli- 
ciously  of  the  press,  books  with  exciting  yellow  jack 
ets,  plays  newly  translated  and  imported,  the  latest 
stories,  the  most  recent  ideas,  all  set  forth  in  the 
current  fashion,  and  all,  as  it  will  seem  to  her,  about 
herself,  her  sort  of  people,  her  sort  of  world,  and 
about  the  effort  which  her  fair  young  ego  is  making 
to  emerge  from  the  indiscriminated  mass  and  to  ac 
quire  physical  form  and  line  congruous  with  that 
"distinctive  body  mounted  on  a  distinguished 


4  AMERICANS 

chassis,"  which  bears  her  with  such  smooth  speed  up 
Riverside  Drive.  She  will  have  no  American  litera 
ture  of  the  "classical  period"  in  her  library;  for  the 
New  England  worthies  who  produced  it  wrote  be 
fore  the  public  of  which  she  is  a  part  began  to  read 
or  to  be  noticed  in  books.  The  jeune  file,  though  a 
votary  of  physical  form,  feels  within  herself  an  ex 
hilarating  chaos,  a  fluent  welter,  which  Lowell  and 
Longfellow  and  James  and  Howells  do  not,  but 
which  her  writers  must,  express. 

Therefore,  she  revels  in  the  English  paradoxers 
and  mountebanks,  the  Scandinavian  misanthropes, 
the  German  egomaniacs,  and,  above  all,  in  the  later 
Russian  novelists,  crazy  with  war,  taxes,  hunger, 
anarchy,  vodka,  and  German  philosophy.  She  does 
enjoy,  however,  the  posthumous  pessimism  of  Mark 
Twain — it  is  "so  strong  and  virile";  and  she  relishes 
his  pilot  oaths — they  are  "so  sincere  and  unconven 
tional."  She  savors  Mr.  Masters'  hard  little  natu 
ralistic  sketches  of  "passion"  on  Michigan  Boule 
vard;  they  remind  her  of  her  brother.  Sherwood 
Anderson  has  a  place  on  her  shelves ;  for  by  the  note 
of  revolt  in  Winesburg,  Ohio  she  recognizes  one 
of  her  own  spirit's  deserted  villages.  Lured  by  a 
primitive  instinct  to  the  sound  of  animals  roving, 
she  ventures  a  curious  foot  into  the  fringes  of  the 
Dreiserian  wilderness  vast  and  drear;  and  barbaric 
impulses  in  her  blood  "answer  the  wail  of  the 
forest."  She  is  not  much  "intrigued"  by  the  frosty 
fragilities  of  imagist  verse ;  but  at  Sandburg's  viking 


MR.  MENCKEN  5 

salute  to  the  Hog-Butcher  of  the  World  she  claps 
her  hands  and  cries:  "Oh,  boy,  isn't  it  gorgeous!" 
This  welter  of  her  "culture"  she  plays,  now  and 
then,  at  organizing  on  some  strictly  modern  prin 
ciple,  such  as  her  father  applies  to  his  business,  such 
as  her  brother  applies  to  his  pleasures — a  principle 
of  egotistical  combat,  a  principle  of  self-indulgence, 
cynical  and  luxurious.  She  is  not  quite  happy  with 
the  result.  Sometimes,  I  imagine,  she  wishes  that 
her  personal  attendants,  those  handmen  and  maid 
ens  who  have  wrought  so  wonderfully  with  her  sur 
faces,  could  be  set  at  work  upon  her  interior,  so  that 
her  internal  furnishing  and  decoration  could  be 
brought  into  measurable  concord  with  the  grace  and 
truth  of  her  contours,  the  rhythm  of  her  hair. 

Imagine  a  thousand  jeunes  piles  thus  wistful,  and 
you  have  the  conditions  ready  for  the  advent  of  a 
new  critic.  At  this  point  enters  at  a  hard  gallop, 
spattered  with  mud,  H.  L.  Mencken  high  in  oath — 
thus  justifying  the  Goethean  maxim:  Aller  Anfang 
ist  schwer.  He  leaps  from  the  saddle  with  sabre 
flashing,  stables  his  horse  in  the  church,  shoots  the 
priest,  hangs  the  professors,  exiles  the  Academy, 
burns  the  library  and  the  university,  and,  amid  the 
smoking  ashes,  erects  a  new  school  of  criticism  on 
modern  German  principles,  which  he  traces  through 
Spingarn  to  Goethe,  but  which  I  should  be  inclined 
to  trace  rather  to  Eckermann. 

Of  my  own  inability  to  interpret  modern  Ger 
many,  however,  I  have  recently  been  painfully  re- 


6  AMERICANS 

minded  by  an  86-page  pamphlet  sent  to  me  from 
Hamburg,  with  blue-pencil  marks  kindly  inserted  by 
the  author,  one  Hansen — apparently  a  German- 
Schleswigian-American  who  has  studied  rhetoric  in 
Mr.  Mencken's  school — inquiring  what  the  masses 
can  possibly  know  of  the  real  Germany,  "so  long  as 
the  Shermans  squat  like  toads  in  the  portals  of  the 
schools  and  the  Northcliffes  send  their  Niagaras  of 
slime  through  the  souls  of  the  English-speaking  peo 
ples."  I  was  amused,  of  course,  to  find  a  great  lord 
of  the  press  so  quaintly  bracketed  with  an  obscure 
teacher  of  literature  in  a  Middle  Western  univer 
sity  as  an  effective  obstacle  between  the  sunlight  and 
Germany.  All  the  same,  my  conscience  was  touched; 
and  I  remembered  with  satisfaction  that,  on  the 
appearance  of  Mr.  Mencken's  Prefaces,  I  made 
a  conscientious  effort  to  tell  my  countrymen  where 
they  should  go,  namely,  to  Mr.  Mencken,  if  they 
desired  a  really  sympathetic  presentation  of  the 
modern  Teutonic  point  of  view  with  reference  to 
politics,  religion,  morals,  women,  beer,  and  belles- 
lettres. 

On  the  appearance  of  Mr.  Mencken's  new  vol 
ume,  Prejudices — continuing  my  humble  service  as 
guide  to  what  I  am  not  thoroughly  qualified  to 
appreciate — I  can  only  say  that  here  I  find  again 
the  Nietzschean  "artistocrat"  of  yesteryear,  essen 
tially  unchanged.  He  is  a  little  sadder,  perhaps, 
since  democracy  has  unhorsed  the  autocrats;  but  his 
skepticism  of  democracy  is  unshaken.  He  is  a  shade 


MR.  MENCKEN  7 

more  cynical  since  the  extension  of  women's  suffrage; 
but  he  is  as  clear  as  ever  that  he  knows  what  girls 
were  made  for.  He  is  a  little  more  sober  since  the 
passage  of  the  national  prohibition  act,  and  a  bit 
less  lyrical  about  the  Pilsener-motive  in  the  writings 
of  Mr.  Huneker;  but,  come  rain  come  shine,  he  still 
points  with  pride  to  a  digestion  ruined  by  alcohol. 
In  other  respects,  former  patrons  of  his  school  for 
beautifying  American  letters  will  find  his  familiar 
manners  and  customs  essentially  unaltered. 

If  we  are  to  have  a  Menckenian  academy,  Mr. 
Mencken  shows  the  way  to  set  it  up — with  vigor 
and  rigor,  with  fist  and  foot,  with  club  and  axe. 
The  crash  of  smashed  things,  the  knocking  of  heads 
together,  the  objurgations  which  accompany  his  en 
trance  have  a  high  advertising  value,  fascinating  to 
all  the  gamins  of  the  press  and  attractive  to  our 
jeune  fille,  who  will  pay  for  a  copy  of  Prejudices 
and  form  her  taste  upon  it.  And  far  be  it  from  me  to 
deny  that  she  may  learn  something  from  her  heavy- 
handed  disciplinarian.  Mr.  Mencken,  like  most 
men,  has  his  merits,  of  which  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
speak.  He  is  alive;  this  is  a  merit  in  a  good  man 
and  hardly  a  defect  even  in  a  bad  critic.  He  has 
a  rough,  prodding  wit,  blunted  by  thrusting  at  ob 
jects  which  it  cannot  pierce,  but  yet  a  wit.  He  is 
passionately  addicted  to  scoffing;  and  if  by  chance  a 
sham  that  is  obnoxious  to  him  comes  in  his  way,  he 
will  scoff  at  a  sham.  He  has  no  inclination  to  the 
softer  forms  of  "slush"  or  to  the  more  diaphanous 


8  AMERICANS 

varieties  of  "pishposh."  He  has  a  style  becoming 
a  retired  military  man — hard,  pointed,  forcible, 
cocksure.  He  likes  a  sentence  stripped  of  baggage, 
and  groups  of  sentences  that  march  briskly  off  at 
the  word  of  command,  wheel,  continue  to  march, 
and,  at  word  of  command,  with  equal  precision, 
halt.  He  has  the  merits  of  an  efficient  rhetorical 
drill-sergeant.  By  his  services  in  pointing  out  to 
our  fair  barbarian  that  she  need  not,  after  all,  read 
Mr.  Veblen,  she  should  acknowledge  that  he  has 
earned  the  royalty  on  her  copy  of  Prejudices.  He 
has  given  her,  in  short,  what  she  might  expect  to  get 
from  a  stiff  freshman  course  in  rhetoric. 

When  he  has  told  her  who  fits  sentences  together 
well  and  who  ill,  he  has  ended  the  instruction  that 
was  helpful  to  her.  He  can  give  her  lessons  in 
derision,  lessons  in  cynicism,  lessons  in  contempt; 
but  she  was  mistress  of  all  these  when  she  entered 
his  school.  He  can  offer  to  free  her  from  attach 
ment  to  English  and  American  literary  traditions; 
but  she  was  never  attached  to  these  traditions.  He 
will  undertake  to  make  her  believe  that  Baptists  and 
Methodists,  professors  and  academicians,  prohibi 
tion  societies  and  marriage  covenants  are  ridiculous ; 
but  she  always  thought  them  ridiculous.  He  is  ready 
to  impregnate  her  mind  with  the  wisdom  of  "old 
Friedrich,"  Stirner,  Strindberg,  and  the  rest  of  the 
crew;  but  her  mind  is  already  impregnated  with  that 
sort  of  wisdom.  "When  one  has  turned  away  from 
the  false  and  the  soft  and  the  silly,"  this  is  the  ques- 


MR.  MENCKEN  9 

tion  she  is  asking,  "where  does  one  go  to  find  true 
and  beautiful  things?"  She  has  heard  somewhere 
by  chance,  poor  girl,  that  one  who  pursues  truth  and 
beauty  is  delivered  from  the  grosser  tyrannies  of 
the  senses,  escapes  a  little  out  of  the  inner  welter, 
and  discovers  serenity  widening  like  a  fair  dawn  in 
the  mind,  with  a  certain  blitheness  and  amenity. 
This  is  aesthetic  liberation. 

For  one  seeking  aesthetic  liberation  there  is  a 
canon  of  things  to  be  thought  on  which  the  world 
liest  of  sound  critics,  Sainte-Beuve,  pronounced  as 
clearly  and  insistently  as  Saint  Paul.  The  Germans, 
as  the  great  Goethe  explained  to  the  saucer-eyed 
Eckermann,  are  "weak  on  the  aesthetic  side."  Aes 
thetic  appreciation  is  superficially  an  affair  of  the 
palate,  and  at  bottom  an  affair  of  the  heart,  embrac 
ing  with  elation  whatsoever  things  are  lovely.  Mr. 
Mencken  has  no  heart;  and  if  he  ever  had  a  palate 
he  has  lost  it  in  protracted  orgies  of  literary  "strong 
drink."  He  turns  with  anguish  from  the  pure  and 
simple  flavors  that  please  children  as  the  first  gifts 
of  nature,  and  that  delight  great  critics  as  the  last 
achievements  of  art.  His  appetite  craves  a  fierce 
stimulation  of  sauces,  a  flamboyance  and  glitter  of 
cheeses,  the  sophisticated  and  appalling  ripeness  of 
wild  duck  nine  days  old. 

He  devotes,  for  example,  two  pages  to  leading 
the  jeune  fille  away  from  Emerson  as  a  writer  of 
no  influence.  He  spends  several  more  in  showing 
her  that  Howells  has  nothing  to  say.  He  warns  her 


10  AMERICANS 

that  Mr.  Garland's  Son  of  the  Middle  Border  is 
amateurish,  flat,  banal,  and  repellant.  He  gives  a 
condescending  coup  de  pied  to  the  solider  works  of 
Arnold  Bennett  and  singles  out  for  intense  admira 
tion  a  scarlet-lattice  scene  or  so  in  his  pot-boilers. 
As  the  author  of  a  work  on  the  American  language, 
over-ambitiously  designed  as  a  wedge  to  split 
asunder  the  two  great  English-speaking  peoples, 
and  as  an  advocate  of  an  "intellectual  aristocracy," 
it  has  suddenly  occurred  to  him  that  we  have  been 
shamefully  neglecting  the  works  of  George  Ade; 
accordingly,  he  strongly  commmends  to  our  younger 
generation  the  works  of  Mr.  George  Ade.  But  the 
high  light  and  white  flame  of  his  appreciation  falls 
upon  three  objects  as  follows:  the  squalid  story  of 
an  atrocious  German  bar-maid  by  Sudermann;  an 
anonymous  autobiographical  novel,  discovered  by 
Mr.  Mencken  himself,  which  exhibits  "an  eternal 
blue-nose  with  every  wart  and  pimple  glittering," 
and  is  "as  devoid  of  literary  sophistication  as  an 
operation  for  gallstones" ;  and,  third  and  last,  the 
works  of  Mr.  Mencken's  partner,  Mr.  George  Jean 
Nathan,  with  his  divine  knack  at  making  phrases 
"to  flabbergast  a  dolt." 

I  imagine  my  bewildered  seeker  for  aesthetic  liber 
ation  asking  her  mentor  if  studying  these  things  will 
help  her  to  form  "the  diviner  mind."  "Don't  bother 
me  now,"  exclaims  Mr.  Mencken;  "don't  bother  me 
now.  I  am  just  striking  out  a  great  phrase.  Aes 
thetic  effort  tones  up  the  mind  with  a  kind  of  high 


MR.  MENCKEN  11 

excitement.  I  shall  say  in  the  next  number  of  the 
Smart  Set  that  James  Harlan  was  the  damnedest 
ass  that  America  ever  produced.  If  you  don't  know 
him,  look  him  up.  In  the  second  edition  of  my  book 
on  the  American  language  I  shall  add  a  new  verb — 
to  Menckenize — and  perhaps  a  new  noun,  Mencken- 
ism.  The  definition  of  these  words  will  clear  up 
matters  for  you,  and  summarize  my  contribution  to 
the  national  belles-lettres.  It  is  beginning  to  take — 
the  spirit  is  beginning  to  spread." 

While  Mr.  Mencken  and  the  jeune  file  are  en 
gaged  in  this  chat  on  the  nature  of  beauty,  I  fancy 
the  horn  of  a  "high-powered"  automobile  is  heard 
from  the  street  before  the  Menckenian  school.  And 
in  bursts  Mr.  Francis  Hackett,  looking  like  a  man 
who  has  just  performed  a  long  and  difficult  opera 
tion  under  the  body  of  his  car,  though,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  has  only  just  completed  a  splashing,  shirt 
sleeve  review  for  The  New  Republic.  "Let's  wash 
up,"  cries  Mr.  Hackett,  stripping  off  his  blouse  of 
blue  jeans,  "and  go  out  to  luncheon." 

"Where  shall  we  f  res  sen?"  says  Mr.  Mencken. 

"At  the  Loyal  Independent  Order  of  United 
Hiberno  -  German  -Anti  -  English -Americans,"  says 
Mr.  Hackett.  "All  the  New  Critics  will  be  there. 
Colum,  Lewisohn,  Wright,  and  the  rest.  I  tried 
to  get  Philip  Littell  to  come  along.  He's  too  gol 
darn  refined.  But  I've  got  a  chap  in  the  car,  from 
the  West,  that  will  please  you.  Used  to  run  a 
column  in  the  World's  Greatest.  Calls  Thomas 


12  AMERICANS 

Arnold  of  Rugby  'that  thrice-damned  boor  and 
noodle.'  " 

"Good!"  Mr.  Mencken  exclaims.  "A  Mencken- 
ism!  A  Menckenism!  A  likely  chap!"  And  out 
they  both  bolt. 

The  jeune  fille,  with  a  thoughtful  backward 
glance  at  Mr.  Hackett's  blouse,  goes  slowly  down 
into  the  street,  and,  strolling  up  the  walk  in  the 
crisp  early  winter  air,  overtakes  Mr.  Littell,  who  is 
strolling  even  more  slowly.  He  is  reading  a  book, 
on  which  the  first  snowflake  of  the  year  has  fallen, 
and,  as  it  falls,  he  looks  up  with  such  fine  delight  in 
his  eye  that  she  asks  him  what  has  pleased  him. 

"A  thought,"  he  replies  gently,  "phrased  by  a 
subtle  writer  and  set  in  a  charming  essay  by  a  fa 
mous  critic.  Listen:  "Oil  il  n'y  a  point  de  delica- 
tesse,  il  n'y  a  point  de  litterature"  1 

"That's  a  new  one  on  me,"  says  the  jeune  fille. 


translated:    "When  one  begins  to  Menckenize,  the  spirit  of 
good  literature  flees  in  consternation." 


II 

TRADITION 

To  lengthen  the  childhood  of  the  individual,  at 
the  same  time  bringing  to  bear  upon  it  the  influences 
of  tradition,  is  the  obvious  way  to  shorten  the  child 
hood  of  races,  nations,  classes,  and  so  to  quicken 
the  general  processes  of  civilization.  Yet  in  the 
busy  hum  of  self-approbation  which  accompanies 
the  critical  activities  of  our  young  people,  perhaps 
the  dominant  note  is  their  satisfaction  at  having 
emancipated  themselves  from  the  fetters  of  tradi 
tion,  the  oppression  of  classical  precedent,  the 
burden  of  an  inherited  culture.  By  detaching  the 
new  literature  from  its  learned  past  they  are  confi 
dent  that  they  are  assuring  it  a  popular  future. 
Turn  to  any  one  of  half  a  dozen  books  which  dis 
cuss  the  present  movement,  and  you  will  learn  that 
people  are  now  discovering,  for  example,  "often  to 
their  own  surprise,"  that  they  can  read  and  enjoy 
poetry.  That  is  because  poetry  has  been  subjected 
to  "democratization."  The  elder  writers,  such  as 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  Emerson,  and  Longfellow, 
constantly  gravelled  them  with  strange  and  obsolete 
phrases,  like  "multitudinous  seas  incarnadine,"  and 

13 


14  AMERICANS 

like  "tumultuous  privacy  of  storm."  The  ancient 
writers  sent  them  to  out-of-the-way  reference  books 
to  look  up  obscure  legends  about  Troy,  not  the  city 
where  collars  are  made,  and  old  stuff  about  war  in 
heaven,  and  the  landing  at  Plymouth  Rock.  It  is 
therefore  a  relief  to  countless  eager  young  souls  that 
Mr.  Mencken  has  dismissed  all  this  as  "the  fossil 
literature  taught  in  colleges,"  and  that  Mary  Austin 
insists  that  native  verse  rhythms  must  be  "within  the 
capacity  of  the  democratically  bred."  It  is  a  joy 
to  hear  from  Mr.  Untermeyer  that  modern  readers 
of  poetry  may  now  come  out  from  the  "lifeless  and 
literary  storehouse"  and  use  life  itself  for  their 
glossary,  as  indeed  they  may — or  the  morning's 
newspaper. 

Those  who  encourage  us  to  hope  for  crops  with 
out  tillage,  learning  without  study,  and  literary  birth 
without  gestation  or  travail  are  doubtless  animated 
by  a  desire  to  augment  the  sum  of  human  felicity; 
but  one  recalls  Burke's  passionate  ejaculation:  "Oh! 
no,  sir,  no.  Those  things  which  are  not  practicable 
are  not  desirable."  To  the  new  mode  of  procuring 
a  literary  renascence  there  may  be  raised  one  objec 
tion,  which,  to  minds  of  a  certain  temper,  will  seem 
rather  grave:  all  experience  is  against  it.  Such  is 
the  thesis  recently  argued  by  an  English  critic,  Mr. 
H.  J.  Massingham,  who  reviews  with  mingled 
amusement  and  alarm  the  present  "self-conscious 
rebellion  against  tradition."  In  the  eyes  of  our  ex 
cited  young  "cosmopolitans,"  whose  culture  has  a 


TRADITION  15 

geographic  rather  than  an  historical  extension,  Mr. 
Massingham's  opinions  will  of  course  appear  to  be 
hopelessly  prejudiced  by  his  Oxford  breeding,  his 
acquaintance  with  the  classics,  his  saturation  in 
Elizabethan  literature,  and  his  avowed  passion  for 
old  books  in  early  editions,  drilled  by  the  biblio 
maniac  worm,  "prehistoric"  things,  like  Nares' 
Glossary  and  Camden's  Remains.  But  it  is  not 
merely  the  opinion  of  our  critic  that  is  formidable: 
"The  restoration  of  the  traditional  link  with  the 
art  of  the  past  is  a  conservative  and  revolutionary 
necessity."  It  is  not  the  supporting  opinion  of  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds :  "The  only  food  and  nourishment 
of  the  mind  of  an  artist  is  the  great  works  of  his 
predecessors."  Sir  Joshua,  too,  was  prejudiced  by 
his  position  as  a  pillar  of  the  robust  English  classi 
cism  of  George  Ill's  time.  It  is  not  even  the  opin 
ion  of  Henry  James,  whom  Mr.  Massingham  pro 
claims  the  profoundest  critic  since  Coleridge,  and 
who  even  our  own  irreverent  youth  seem  to  suspect 
should  be  mentioned  respectfully :  "It  takes  an  end 
less  amount  of  history  to  make  even  a  little  tradition 
and  an  endless  amount  of  tradition  to  make  even 
a  little  taste  and  an  endless  amount  of  taste,  by  the 
same  token,  to  make  even  a  little  tranquillity." 

The  formidable  arguments  against  the  radical 
engineers  of  renascence  are  just  the  notorious  facts 
of  literary  history.  The  fact  that  a  bit  of  the  "fossil 
literature  taught  in  colleges,"  the  story  of  Arthur, 
written  in  Latin  by  a  Welsh  monk  in  the  twelfth 


16  AMERICANS 

century,  has  flowered  and  fruited  in  poetry,  paint 
ing,  and  music  generation  after  generation  pretty 
much  over  the  civilized  world.  The  fact  that  Chau 
cer  and  his  contemporaries,  in  whom  poetry  had  a 
glorious  rebirth,  had  previously  devoured  every 
thing  in  what  Mr.  Untermeyer  would  call  the 
"lifeless  and  literary  storehouse"  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  fact  that  the  Elizabethans,  to  quote 
Mr.  Massingham's  vigorous  phrase,  flung  them 
selves  on  tradition  "like  a  hungry  wolf,  not  only 
upon  the  classics  but  upon  all  the  tradition  open  to 
them."  The  fact  that  Restoration  comedy  is  simply 
a  revival  of  late  Caroline  in  the  hands  of  men  who 
had  studied  Moliere.  The  fact  that  the  leaders  of 
the  new  movement  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
they  wished  to  break  from  the  stereotyped  classi 
cism,  did  not  urge  young  people  to  slam  the  door 
on  the  past,  but,  on  the  contrary,  harked  back  over 
the  heads  of  Pope  and  Dryden  to  the  elder  and 
more  central  tradition  of  Milton,  Shakespeare,  and 
Spenser;  and  sluiced  into  the  arid  fields  of  common 
sense,  grown  platitudinous,  the  long-dammed  or 
subterranean  currents  of  mediaeval  romance.  The 
fact  that  "Childe  Harold,"  "Adonais,"  "The  Eve 
of  St.  Agnes,"  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  and 
"The  Castle  of  Indolence"  were  all  written  by  imi 
tators  of  Spenser  or  by  imitators  of  his  imitators. 
The  fact,  to  omit  the  Victorians,  that  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats,  the  most  skilful  living  engineer  of  literary 
renascence,  set  all  his  collaborators  to  digging 


TRADITION  17 

around  the  roots  of  th'e  ancient  Celtic  tree  before 
we  enjoyed  the  blossoming  of  the  new  spring  in 
Ireland.  The  fact  that  John  Masefield,  freshest 
and  most  tuneful  voice  in  England,  is  obviously 
steeped  to  the  lips  in  the  poetry  of  Byron,  Shake 
speare,  Spenser,  and  Chaucer. 

Why  is  it  that  the  great  poets,  novelists,  and 
critics,  with  few  exceptions,  have  been,  in  the  more 
liberal  sense  of  the  word,  scholars — masters  of  sev 
eral  languages,  students  of  history  and  philosophy, 
antiquarians?  First  of  all  because  the  great  writer 
conceives  of  his  vocation  as  the  most  magnificent 
and  the  most  complex  of  crafts.  He  is  to  be  his 
own  architect,  master-builder,  carpenter,  painter, 
singer,  orator,  poet  and  dramatist.  His  materials, 
his  tools,  his  methods  are,  or  may  be,  infinite.  To 
him,  then,  the  written  tradition  is  a  school  and  a 
museum  in  which,  if  he  has  a  critical  and  inventive 
mind,  he  learns,  from  both  the  successes  and  the 
failures  of  his  predecessors,  how  to  set  to  work  upon 
his  own  problems  of  expression.  As  Mr.  Yeats  is 
fond  of  pointing  out,  the  young  poet  may  find  Her 
bert  and  Vaughan  more  helpful  to  him  than  the 
work  of  his  own  contemporaries,  because  the  faults 
in  the  elder  poets,  the  purple  patches  that  failed  to 
hold  their  color,  will  not  attract  and  mislead  him. 

But  tradition  is  more  than  a  school  of  crafts.  It 
is  a  school  of  mood  and  manners.  The  artist  who 
is  also  a  scholar  cannot  fail  to  discover  that  what 
distinguishes  all  the  golden  periods  of  art,  what 


18  AMERICANS 

constitutes  the  perpetual  appeal  of  the  masters,  is  a 
kind  of  innermost  poise  and  serenity,  tragic  in 
Sophocles,  heroic  in  Michelangelo,  skeptical  in 
Montaigne,  idyllic  in  Sidney,  ironic  in  Fielding. 
This  enviable  tranquillity  reigns  only  in  a  mind  that, 
looking  before  and  after,  feels  itself  the  representa 
tive  of  something  outlasting  time,  some  national 
ideal,  some  religious  faith,  some  permanent  human 
experience,  some  endless  human  quest.  Nothing 
begets  this  mood  and  manner,  the  sovereign  mark 
of  good  breeding  in  letters,  like  habitual  association 
with  those  who  have  it,  the  majority  of  whom  are, 
in  the  vulgar  sense  of  the  word,  dead.  Izaak  Wal 
ton,  a  minor  writer  in  whose  work  there  is  a  golden 
afterglow  of  the  great  age,  calls,  in  one  of  his 
Angler's  Dialogues,  for  "that  smooth  song  which 
was  made  by  Kit  Marlowe,  now  at  least  fifty  years 
ago,"  and  for  the  answer  to  it  "which  was  made 
by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  his  younger  days."  If 
some  of  our  modern  imitators  of  the  auctioneer  and 
the  steam  calliope  would  now  and  then,  instead  of 
reading  one  another,  step  into  the  "lifeless  and  lit 
erary  storehouse"  and  compare  these  "fossils"  con 
scientiously  with  their  own  recent  efforts  to  make 
verse  popular!  "They  were  old-fashioned  poetry," 
says  Piscator  apologetically,  "but  choicely  good,  I 
think  much  better  than  the  strong  lines  that  are  now 
in  fashion  in  this  critical  age." 

Out  of  the  tranquillity  induced  by  working  in  a 
good  literary  tradition  develops  form.     The  clever 


TRADITION  19 

theorists  who  insist  that  form  alone  matters,  that 
form  is  the  only  preservative  element  in  literature, 
forget  that  form  is  not  "self-begotten"  but  a  prod 
uct  of  the  formative  spirit.  Mr.  Massingham  is 
a  bit  fastidious  in  his  use  of  this  word.  He  denies 
form,  for  example,  to  Pope  and  to  Swinburne. 
Though  both  have  technique,  that  is  another  matter. 
"Form,"  he  declares,  "is  a  vision  contained  and 
made  manifest."  He  attributes  the  unproductive 
ness  of  our  age  in  the  field  of  satire  to  a  vision 
without  a  traditional  base,  reeling  and  shifting  in 
the  choppy  waters  of  contemporary  opinion.  His 
remarks  on  the  deficiencies  of  Gilbert  Cannan  as  a 
satirist  and  novelist  further  elucidate  his  idea;  and 
they  may  serve  also  as  a  comment  upon  many  of 
the  younger  writers  in  America : 

The  works  of  Mr.  Cannan  seem  to  say,  "That  is 
what  life  is — a  surge  of  base  and  beautiful  forces, 
intensified  in  the  consciousness  of  man."  But  that 
is  a  fallacy.  Life  is  like  that  to  the  layman,  but  it 
is  the  business  of  the  artist  to  see  a  clue  in  it,  to 
give  it  shape  and  order,  to  weld  its  particles  into 
congruity.  Here  is  where  his  lack  of  a  constructive 
or  satiric  purpose  growing  out  of  and  controlling 
the  material  tells  to  his  hurt.  He  knows  life  in  the 
raw,  but  the  satirist  would  put  it  in  the  oven  and 
dish  it  up.  So  he  wanders  in  the  dark,  and  we 
blunder  after  him.  But  we  want  light,  if  it  be  only 
from  a  tallow  candle. 

Now,  many  of  the  young  writers  in  America  are 
disposed  to  reject  the  English  tradition  as  unservice- 


20  AMERICANS 

able  lumber.  They  scorn  equally  the  greater  part 
of  the  American  tradition  as  puritanical,  effeminate, 
or  over-intellectualized.  If  they  seek  foreign  allies, 
it  is  with  those  who  help  them  forget  our  national 
characteristics,  our  native  bent  and  purposes,  our 
discovered  special  American  "genius."  In  what 
measure  is  the  revolt  due  to  the  conduct  of  the  move 
ment  by  writers  whose  blood  and  breeding  are  as 
hostile  to  the  English  strain  as  a  cat  to  water? 
Whatever  the  answer,  I  suspect  that  the  young  peo 
ple  who  are  being  congratulated  right  and  left  on 
their  emancipation  from  tradition  are  rather  open 
to  condolence  than  to  felicitation.  They  have 
broken  away  from  so  much  that  was  formative,  and 
they  suffer  so  obviously  in  consequence  of  the  break. 
Their  poets  have  lost  a  skill  which  Poe  had:  though 
they  paint  a  little,  and  chant  a  little,  and  speak  a 
great  deal  of  faintly  rhythmical  prose,  they  have 
not  learned  how  to  sing.  Their  novelists  have  lost 
a  vision  which  Howells  had:  though  they  have 
shaken  off  the  "moralistic  incubus"  and  have  re 
leased  their  "suppressed  desires,"  they  have  not 
learned  how  to  conceive  or  to  present  a  coherent 
picture  of  civilized  society.  Their  leaders  have  lost 
a  constructiveness  which  a  critic  so  laden  with  ex 
plosives  as  Emerson  exhibited:  though  they  have 
blown  up  the  old  highways  they  have  not  made  new 
roads. 

Am  I  doing  the  "young  people"  an  injustice?     I 
turn  from  their  anthologies  of  verse,  where  I  keep 


TRADITION  21 

searching  in  vain  for  such  music  as  the  angler's 
milkmaid  sang;  and  from  the  novels  of  Mr.  Cabell, 
in  whom  I  have  not  discovered  that  ascending  sun 
heralded  by  the  lookouts;  to  A  Modern  Book  of 
Criticism,  recently  collected  and  put  forth  by  Mr. 
Ludwig  Lewisohn.  The  editor's  desire  is  to  show 
us  that  "a  group  of  critics,  young  men  or  men  who 
do  not  grow  old,  are  at  work  upon  the  creation  of  a 
civilized  cultural  atmosphere  in  America."  The 
idea  resembles  that,  does  it  not?  of  Mr.  Waldo 
Frank,  who  recently  informed  us  that  literature 
began  in  America  in  1900 — or  was  it  1910? — at 
Mr.  Stieglitz's  place  in  New  York.  It  is  related 
also  to  that  recent  comprehensive  indictment  edited 
by  Mr.  Harold  Stearns  and  ironically  entitled  Civili 
zation  in  the  United  States.  The  implication  is 
clearly  that  the  country  which  developed  Bradford, 
Franklin,  Emerson,  Lincoln,  Thoreau,  Whitman, 
Mark  Twain,  here  and  there  in  villages  and  back 
woods,  had  no  "civilized  cultural  atmosphere" 
worth  mentioning.  It  does  not  seem  quite  plausible. 
But  let  us  proceed  with  Mr.  Lewisohn.  His 
critics: — "Like  a  group  of  shivering  young  Davids 
— slim  and  frail  but  with  a  glimpse  of  morning  sun 
shine  on  their  foreheads — they  face  an  army  of 
Goliaths."  The  slim  and  shivering  young  Davids 
turn  out  on  investigation  to  be  Mr.  Huneker,  Mr. 
Spingarn,  Mr.  Mencken,  Mr.  Lewisohn,  Mr. 
Hackett,  Mr.  Van  Wyck  Brooks,  and  Randolph 
Bourne.  It  is  not  a  group,  taken  as  a  whole,  how- 


22  AMERICANS 

ever  it  may  be  connected  with  the  house  of  Jesse, 
which  should  be  expected  to  hear  any  profound 
murmuring  of  ancestral  voices  or  to  experience  any 
mysterious  inflowing  of  national  experience  in  medi 
tating  on  the  names  of  Mark  Twain,  Whitman, 
Thoreau,  Lincoln,  Emerson,  Franklin,  and  Brad 
ford.  One  doesn't  blame  our  Davids  for  their  in 
ability  to  connect  themselves  vitally  with  this  line 
of  Americans,  for  their  inability  to  receive  its  tradi 
tion  or  to  carry  it  on.  But  one  cannot  help  asking 
whether  this  inability  does  not  largely  account  for 
the  fact  that  Mr.  Lewisohn's  group  of  critics  are 
restless  impressionists,  almost  destitute  of  doctrine, 
and  with  no  discoverable  unifying  tendency  except 
to  let  themselves  out  into  a  homeless  happy  land 
where  they  may  enjoy  the  "colorful"  cosmic  weather, 
untroubled  by  business  men,  or  middle-class  Amer 
icans,  or  Congressmen,  or  moralists,  or  humanists, 
or  philosophers,  or  professors,  or  Victorians,  or 
Puritans,  or  New  Englanders,  or  Messrs.  Tarking- 
ton  and  Churchill.  A  jolly  lot  of  Goliaths  to  slay 
before  we  get  that  "civilized  cultural  atmosphere." 
By  faithfully  studying  the  writings  of  Mr. 
Mencken,  Mr.  Lewisohn,  and  other  "shivering 
young  Davids,"  I  have  obtained  a  fairly  clear  con 
ception  of  what  a  "civilized  cultural  atmosphere" 
is  not.  It  consists  of  none  of  those  heart-remem 
bered  things — our  own  revenue  officers  probing  our 
old  shoes  for  diamond  necklaces,  our  own  New 
York  newspapers,  and  Maryland  chicken  on  the 


TRADITION  23 

Albany  boat — which  cause  a  native  American  re 
turning  from  a  year  in  Europe  to  exclaim  as  he  sails 
up  the  tranquil  bosom  of  the  Hudson  and  rushes  by 
a  standard  steel  Pullman,  back  to  the  great  warm 
embrace  of  his  own  land,  "Thank  Heaven,  we  are 
home  again."  No,  it  is  none  of  these  things.  If, 
without  going  to  Munich,  you  wish  to  know  what  a 
"civilized  cultural  atmosphere"  really  is,  you  must 
let  Mr.  Lewisohn  describe  it  for  you  as  it  existed, 
till  the  passage  of  the  Volstead  act,  in  one  or  two 
odd  corners  of  old  New  York:  "The  lamps  of  the 
tavern  had  orange-colored  shades,  the  wainscoting 
was  black  with  age.  The  place  was  filled  with  a 
soothing  dusk  and  the  blended  odor  of  beer  and 
tobacco  and  Wiener  Schnitzel.  /  was,  at  least,  back 
In  civilization.  That  tavern  is  gone  now,  swept  away 
by  the  barbarism  of  the  Neo-Puritans." 

To  the  book  from  which  this  quotation  is  made, 
Mr.  Lewisohn's  recently  published  autobiographical 
record,  Up  Stream,  students  of  contemporary  criti 
cal  currents  and  eddies  are  much  indebted.  The 
author,  like  many  of  the  other  belligerent  young 
writers  who  have  shown  in  recent  years  a  grave 
concern  for  the  state  of  civilization  in  America,  has 
ostensibly  been  directing  his  attack  against  our  na 
tional  culture  from  a  very  elevated  position.  He 
has  professed  himself  one  of  the  enlightened  spirits 
who  from  time  to  time  rise  above  the  narrowing 
prejudices  of  nationality  into  the  free  air  of  the 
republic  of  letters,  the  grand  cosmopolis  of  the  true 


24  AMERICANS 

humanist.  From  his  watch-tower — apparently  "in 
the  skies" — he  has  launched  lightnings  of  derision 
at  those  who  still  weave  garlands  for  their  Lares 
and  Penates,  at  the  nationalist  with  his  "selective 
sympathies,"  at  the  traditionalist  with  his  senti 
mental  fondness  for  folk-ways.  Those  who  feel 
strongly  attracted,  as  I  do  myself,  to  the  Ciceronian 
and  Stoic  conception  of  a  universal  humanity  and  by 
the  Christian  and  Augustinian  vision  of  a  universal 
City  of  God,  may  easily  have  mistaken  Mr.  Lewi- 
sohn  for  a  "sharpshooter"  of  the  next  age,  an  out 
post  from  the  land  of  their  heart's  desire.  But  in 
Up  Stream,  Mr.  Lewisohn  drops  the  mask  and  re 
veals  himself,  for  all  his  Jewish  radicalism,1  as 
essentially  a  sentimental  and  homesick  German, 
longing  in  exile  for  a  Germany  which  exists  only  in 
his  imagination. 

Even  the  purified  and  liberated  mind  of  a  Child 
of  Light,  living  according  to  nature  and  reason,  is 
unable  to  rid  itself  wholly  of  "selective  sympathies." 
It  betrays  under  provocation  a  merely  "traditional 


1  In  a  notably  competent  article  on  "The  Case  of  Mr.  Lewisohn," 
which  appeared  in  The  Menorah  Journal  of  June,  1922,  Professor 
Jacob  Zeitlin  writes :  "Whether  entirely  just  or  strongly  colored, 
it  is  evident  that  Mr.  Lewisohn's  criticism  of  State  Universities 
has  little  relevance  to  his  character  as  a  Jew.  It  indicates  nothing 
more  than  that  his  sensitive  aesthetic  organism  recoiled  in  pain 
from  an  environment  that  was  uncongenial.  And  the  same  obser 
vation  holds  concerning  his  reaction  toward  American  life  in  gen 
eral.  He  but  adds  his  voice  to  a  chorus  of  growing  volume,  re 
iterating  the  now  familiar  burden  of  the  crudeness  and  narrowness 
of  our  political  and  social  ideas.  There  is  ample  ground  for  such 
a  protest  as  he  makes,  but  it  is  not  a  protest  that  can  be  identified 
with  any  recognizably  Jewish  outlook." 


TRADITION  25 

emotion"  for  a  cultural  atmosphere  compounded  of 
the  odors  of  beer,  tobacco,  and  Wiener  Schnitzel, 
with  perhaps  a  whiff  of  Kant  and  a  strain  of  Hun 
garian  music  floating  through  it,  while  two  or  three 
high  philosophical  spirits  discuss  what  a  poet  can  do 
when  his  wife  grows  old  and  stringy.  I  do  not  think 
it  necessary  to  remonstrate  with  a  man  merely  be 
cause  his  affective  nature  responds  powerfully  to  a 
vision  of  felicity  thus  composed;  but  I  think  it  a  bit 
impractical  to  ask  "a  nation  of  prohibitionists  and 
Puritans"  to  accept  this  vision  as  the  goal  of  cul 
tural  efforts  in  America.  It  is  a  help  to  fruitful 
controversy,  however,  when  a  man  abandons  his 
absurdly  insincere  professions  of  "universal  sympa 
thy" — his  purring  protestation  that  he  desires  "nei 
ther  to  judge  nor  to  condemn" — and  frankly  admits 
that  he  likes  the  German  life,  what  he  knows  of  it, 
and  that  he  regards  American  life,  what  he  knows 
of  it,  as  "ugly  and  mean." 

The  militant  hostility  of  alien-minded  critics  to 
wards  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  dominant  traits 
of  the  national  character  is,  on  the  whole,  to  be 
welcomed  as  provocative  of  reflection  and  as  a  cor 
rective  to  national  conceit.  But  the  amendment  of 
that  which  is  really  ugly  and  mean  and  basely  re 
pressive  in  our  contemporary  society  is  less  likely 
to  be  achieved  by  listening  to  the  counsels  of  exiled 
emancipators  from  Munich  than  by  harking  back  to 
our  own  liberative  tradition,  which  long  antedates 
the  efforts  of  these  bewildered  impressionists. 


26  AMERICANS 

When  we  grow  dull  and  inadventurous  and  sloth- 
fully  content  with  our  present  conditions  and  our 
old  habits,  it  is  not  because  we  are  "traditionalists" ; 
it  is,  on  the  contrary,  because  we  have  ceased  to  feel 
the  formative  spirit  of  our  own  traditions.  It  is 
not  much  in  the  American  vein,  to  be  sure,  to  con 
struct  private  little  anarchies  in  the  haze  of  a 
smoking-room ;  but  practical  revolt,  on  a  large  scale 
and  sagaciously  conducted,  is  an  American  tradition, 
which  we  should  continue  to  view  with  courage  and 
the  tranquillity  which  is  related  to  courage.  Amer 
ica  was  born  because  it  revolted.  It  revolted  be 
cause  it  condemned.  It  condemned  because  its 
sympathies  were  not  universal  but  selective.  Its 
sympathies  were  selective  because  it  had  a  vision 
of  a  better  life,  pressing  for  fulfilment.  That  vision, 
and  not  a  conception  of  life  as  a  meaningless  "surge 
of  base  and  beautiful  forces"  liberated  its  chief  men 
of  letters.  Thence  their  serenity,  in  place  of  that 
"gentle  but  chronic  dizziness"  which  a  critic  of 
Young  Germany,  Hugo  von  Hofmannsthal,  says 
"vibrates  among  us."  Thence,  too,  their  freedom 
from  ancestor-worship  and  bondage  to  the  letter. 
Listen  to  Emerson: 

Ask  not  me,  as  Muftis  can, 
To  recite  the  Alcoran; 
Well  I  love  the  meaning  sweet; 
I  tread  the  book  beneath  my  feet. 

Thence,  too,  the  traditional  bent  of  the  American 
spirit  toward  modernity,  toward  realism.  It  was 


TRADITION  27 

nearly  a  hundred  years  ago  that  our  then-leading 
critic  wrote  in  his  journal:  "You  must  exercise  your 
genius  in  some  form  that  has  essential  life  now;  do 
something  which  is  proper  to  the  hour  and  cannot 
but  be  done."  Did  he  not  recognize  what  was  to 
be  done?  I  quote  once  more  from  him  a  finer  sen 
tence  than  any  of  our  impressionists  has  ever  writ 
ten:  "A  wife,  a  babe,  a  brother,  poverty,  and  a 
country,  which  the  Greeks  had,  I  have."  The  grip 
and  the  beauty  of  that  simple  sentence  are  due  to 
a  union  in  it  of  an  Athenian  vision  with  Yankee 
self-reliance.  It  is  the  kind  of  feeling  that  comes 
to  a  man  who  has  lived  in  a  great  tradition. 


Ill 

FRANKLIN  AND  THE  AGE  OF 
ENLIGHTENMENT 

Americans  who  desire  to  know  the  breadth  and 
humanity  of  their  own  traditions  should  give  some 
days  and  nights  to  the  study  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  in  which  the  minds  of  our  colonial  ancestors 
definitely  turned  from  the  problems  of  mediaeval 
theology  to  the  assimilation  of  classical  culture  and 
to  the  practise  of  a  rational  philosophy.  The  civil 
izing  force  of  even  the  English  eighteenth  century 
has  been  greatly  neglected  by  English-speaking  stu 
dents,  in  favor  of  the  excitement  and  glamour 
offered  by  the  Romantic  Movement.  But  to  the 
civilizing  force  of  the  American  eighteenth  century 
the  present  generation  is  for  assignable  reasons  sin 
gularly  inattentive. 

Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  reactionary  vil 
lage  clergymen  began  the  practice  of  referring  in 
the  pulpit  to  conspicuous  "liberators"  of  the  pre 
ceding  age  like  Franklin,  Jefferson,  and  Paine  as 
"horrible  examples,"  as  men  of  brilliant  intellect 
and  patriotic  motives,  but  of  "infamous  character" ; 
and  this  clerical  tradition  is  foolishly  perpetuated 

28 


FRANKLIN  29 

in  some  metropolitan  pulpits  to  this  day.  In  the 
second  place,  German  metaphysics  and  the  romantic 
deluge  swept  over  us  quite  as  devastatingly  as  over 
England;  and  the  color  and  humor  and  emotion  of 
Scott,  Cooper,  and  then  Dickens  made  the  wit  and 
solid  sense  of  our  classical  period  seem  flat  and 
unprofitable.  Finally,  when  popular  curiosity  about 
our  origins  is  awakened,  it  is  quickly  satisfied  by  a 
few  familiar  pictures  of  the  Puritan  colonists  in  the 
seventeenth  century  before  the  dawn  of  the  Age  of 
Enlightenment,  here  or  elsewhere. 

It  is  only  by  some  such  considerations  as  these 
that  one  can  understand  the  affrontery  of  recent 
critics  of  civilization  in  the  United  States  who  date 
the  emancipation  of  the  American  mind  from 
seventeenth  century  theology  with  the  introduction 
of  Goethe  and  Kant  to  New  England.  And  it  is 
only  by  assuming  the  existence  of  wide  general 
ignorance,  the  picturesque  ignorance  of  legend,  with 
regard  to  our  own  eminent  men,  that  one  can  explain 
the  friendly  condescension  with  which  the  average 
journalist,  for  example,  refers  to  that  "simple,"  or 
to  that  "homespun"  fellow,  "our  honest  Franklin." 

In  a  respectful  and  indeed  laudatory  notice  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review  of  July,  1806,  Lord  Jeffrey  em 
ployed  the  case  of  the  "uneducated  tradesman  of 
America"  to  support  his  contention  that  "regular 
education  is  unfavourable  to  vigour  or  originality 
of  understanding."  Franklin  attained  his  eminence, 
so  runs  the  argument,  without  academical  instruc- 


30  AMERICANS 

tion,  with  only  casual  reading,  without  the  benefit 
of  association  with  men  of  letters,  and  "in  a  society 
where  there  was  no  relish  and  no  encouragement 
for  literature."  This  statement  of  Franklin's  edu 
cational  opportunities  is  manifestly  inadequate;  but 
it  so  pleasantly  flatters  our  long-standing  pride  in 
our  self-made  men,  that  we  are  loath  to  challenge  it. 

The  hero  presented  to  the  schoolboy  and  pre 
served  in  popular  tradition  is  still  an  "uneducated 
tradesman  of  America" :  a  runaway  Boston  printer, 
adorably  walking  up  Market  Street  in  Philadelphia 
with  his  three  puffy  rolls;  directing  his  fellow  shop 
keepers  the  way  to  wealth;  sharply  enquiring  of 
extravagant  neighbours  whether  they  have  not  paid 
too  much  for  their  whistle ;  flying  his  kite  in  a  thun 
derstorm  and  by  a  happy  combination  of  curiosity 
and  luck  making  important  contributions  to  science ; 
and,  to  add  the  last  lustre  to  his  name,  by  a  happy 
combination  of  industry  and  frugality  making  his 
fortune.  This  picturesque  and  racy  figure  is  obvi 
ously  a  product  of  provincial  America, — the  first 
great  Yankee  with  all  the  strong  lineaments  of  the 
type:  hardness,  shrewdness,  ingenuity,  practical 
sense,  frugality,  industry,  self-reliance. 

The  conception  is  perhaps  sound  enough  so  far 
as  it  goes,  being  derived  mainly  from  facts  supplied 
by  Franklin  himself  in  the  one  book  through  which 
he  has  secured  an  eternal  life  in  literature.  But  the 
popular  notion  of  his  personality  thus  derived  is 
incomplete,  because  the  Autobiography,  ending  at 


FRANKLIN  31 

the  year  1757,  contains  no  record  of  the  thirty-three 
years  which  developed  a  competent  provincial  into 
an  able,  cultivated,  and  imposing  man  of  the  world. 
The  Franklin  now  discoverable  in  the  ten  volumes 
of  his  complete  works  is  one  of  the  most  widely 
and  thoroughly  cultivated  men  of  his  age.  He  had 
not,  to  be  sure,  a  university  training,  but  he  had 
what  serves  quite  as  well:  sharp  appetite  and  large 
capacity  for  learning,  abundance  of  books,  extensive 
travel,  important  participation  in  great  events,  and 
association  through  a  long  term  of  years  with  the 
most  eminent  men  of  three  nations.  The  object  of 
our  colleges  and  universities  is  only  to  provide  a 
feeble  substitute  for  the  advantages  which  Franklin 
enjoyed.  In  touch  as  printer  and  publisher  with 
the  classic  and  current  literature  produced  at  home 
and  imported  from  abroad,  he  becomes  in  Philadel 
phia  almost  as  good  a  "Queen  Anne's  man"  as  Swift 
or  Defoe.  His  scientific  investigations  bring  him 
into  correspondence  with  fellow  workers  in  Eng 
land,  France,  Germany,  Italy,  Holland,  and  Spain. 
Entering  upon  public  life,  he  is  forced  into  coopera 
tion  or  conflict  with  the  leading  politicians,  diplo 
mats,  and  statesmen  of  Europe.  In  his  native  land 
he  has  known  men  like  Cotton  Mather,  Whitefield, 
Benjamin  Rush,  Benjamin  West,  Ezra  Stiles,  Noah 
Webster,  Jay,  Adams,  Jefferson,  and  Washington. 
In  England,  where  his  affections  strike  such  deep 
root  that  he  considers  establishing  there  his  perma 
nent  abode,  he  is  in  relationship,  more  or  less  inti- 


32  AMERICANS 

mate,  with  Mandeville,  Paine,  Priestley,  Price, 
Adam  Smith,  Robertson,  Hume,  Joseph  Banks, 
Bishop  Watson,  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  Lord 
Kames,  Lord  Shelburne,  Lord  Howe,  Burke,  and 
Chatham.  Among  Frenchmen  he  numbers  on  his 
list  of  admiring  friends  Vergennes,  Lafayette, 
Mirabeau,  Turgot,  Quesnay,  La  Rochefoucauld, 
Condorcet,  Lavoisier,  Buffon,  D'Alembert,  Robes 
pierre,  and  Voltaire. 

It  is  absurd  to  speak  of  one  who  has  been  sub 
jected  to  the  molding  of  such  forces  as  a  product 
of  the  provinces.  All  Europe  has  wrought  upon  and 
metamorphosed  the  Yankee  printer.  The  man 
whom  Voltaire  salutes  with  a  fraternal  kiss  is  a 
statesman,  a  philosopher,  a  friend  of  mankind,  and 
a  favorite  son  of  the  eighteenth  century.  With  no 
softening  of  his  patriotic  fibre  or  loss  of  his  Yankee 
tang,  he  has  acquired  all  the  common  culture  and 
most  of  the  master  characteristics  of  the  Age  of 
Enlightenment,  up  to  the  point  where  the  French 
Revolution  injected  into  it  a  drop  of  madness:  its 
emancipation  from  unscrutinized  tradition  and  au 
thority,  its  regard  for  reason  and  nature,  its  social 
consciousness,  its  progressiveness,  its  tolerance,  its 
cosmopolitanism,  and  its  bland  philanthropy. 

Now  this  man  deserves  his  large  place  in  our 
literary  history  not  so  much  by  virtue  of  his  writ 
ings,  which  had  little  immediate  influence  upon 
belles-lettres,  as  by  virtue  of  his  acts  and  ideas, 
which  helped  liberate  and  liberalize  America.  To 


FRANKLIN  33 

describe  his  most  important  work  is  to  recite  the 
story  of  his  life. 

In  reviewing  his  own  career  Franklin  does  not 
dwell  on  the  fact  that  he  who  was  to  stand  before 
kings  had  emerged  from  a  tallow  chandler's  shop. 
To  his  retrospective  eye  there  was  nothing  miracu 
lous  nor  inexplicable  in  his  origin.  On  the  contrary 
he  saw  and  indicated  very  clearly  the  sources  of  his 
talents  and  the  external  impulses  that  gave  them 
direction.  Born  in  Boston  on  January  6,  1706,  he 
inherited  from  his  long-lived  parents,  Josiah  and 
Abiah  Folger  Franklin,  a  rugged  physical  and 
mental  constitution  which  hardly  faltered  through 
the  hard  usage  of  eighty-four  years.  He  recognized 
and  profited  by  his  father's  skill  in  drawing  and 
music,  his  "mechanical  genius,"  his  "understanding 
and  solid  judgment  in  prudential  matters,  both  in 
private  and  publick  affairs,"  his  admirable  custom 
of  having  at  his  table  "as  often  as  he  could,  some 
sensible  friend  or  neighbour  to  converse  with,"  al 
ways  taking  care  "to  start  some  ingenious  or  useful 
topic  for  discourse,  which  might  tend  to  improve 
the  minds  of  his  children."  Benjamin's  formal 
schooling  was  begun  when  he  was  eight  years  old 
and  abandoned  when  he  was  ten,  together  with 
the  design  of  making  him  a  clergyman.  He  signifi 
cantly  remarks,  however,  that  he  does  not  remember 
a  time  when  he  could  not  read;  and  the  subsequent 
owner  of  the  best  private  library  in  America  was 
as  a  mere  child  an  eager  collector  of  books.  For 


34  AMERICANS 

the  two  years  following  his  removal  from  school  he 
was  employed  in  his  father's  business.  When  he 
expressed  a  firm  disinclination  to  become  a  tallow 
chandler,  his  father  attempted  to  discover  his  natu 
ral  bent  by  taking  him  about  to  see  various  artisans 
at  their  work.  Everything  that  Franklin  touched 
taught  him  something;  and  everything  that  he 
learned,  he  used.  Though  his  tour  of  the  trades 
failed  to  win  him  to  any  mechanical  occupation,  "it 
has  ever  since  been  a  pleasure  to  me,"  he  says,  "to 
see  good  workmen  handle  their  tools;  and  it  has 
been  useful  to  me,  having  learnt  so  much  by  it  as  to 
be  able  to  do  little  odd  jobs  myself  in  my  house,  .  .  . 
and  to  construct  little  machines  for  my  experiments, 
while  the  intention  of  making  the  experiment  was 
fresh  and  warm  in  my  mind."  Throughout  his  boy 
hood  and  youth  he  apparently  devoured  every  book 
that  he  could  lay  hands  upon.  He  went  through  his 
father's  shelves  of  "polemic  divinity";  read  abun 
dantly  in  Plutarch's  Lives;  acquired  Bunyan's  works 
"in  separate  little  volumes,"  which  he  later  sold  to 
buy  Burton's  Historical  Collections;  received  an 
impetus  towards  practical  improvements  from  De 
foe's  Essay  on  Projects,  and  an  impetus  towards 
virtue  from  Mather's  Essays  to  Do  Good.  Before 
he  left  Boston  he  had  his  mind  opened  to  free  specu 
lation  and  equipped  for  logical  reasoning  by  Locke's 
Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding,  the  Port 
Royal  Art  of  Thinking,  Xenophon's  Memorabilia, 
and  the  works  of  Shaftesbury  and  Collins. 


FRANKLIN  35 

Franklin  found  the  right  avenue  for  a  person  of 
his  "bookish  inclination"  when  his  brother  James, 
returning  from  England  in  1717  with  a  press  and 
letters,  set  up  in  Boston  as  a  printer,  and  proceeded 
to  the  publication  of  the  Boston  Gazette,  1719,  and 
the  New  England  Courant,  1721.  Benjamin,  aged 
twelve,  became  his  apprentice.  It  can  hardly  be  too 
much  emphasized  that  this  was  really  an  inspiring 
"job."  It  made  him  stand  at  a  very  early  age  full  in 
the  wind  of  local  political  and  theological  contro 
versy.  It  forced  him  to  use  all  his  childish  stock  of 
learning  and  daily  stimulated  him  to  new  acquisi 
tions.  It  put  him  in  touch  with  other  persons,  young 
and  old,  of  bookish  and  literary  inclination.  They 
lent  him  books  which  kindled  his  poetic  fancy  to  the 
pitch  of  composing  occasional  ballads  in  the  Grub 
Street  style,  which  his  brother  printed,  and  had  him 
hawk  about  town.  His  father  discountenanced  these 
effusions,  declaring  that  "verse-makers  were  gen 
erally  beggars";  but  coming  upon  his  son's  private 
experiments  in  prose,  he  applied  the  right  incentive 
by  pointing  out  where  the  work  "fell  short  in  ele 
gance  of  expression,  in  method  and  in  perspicuity." 
"About  this  time,"  says  Franklin  in  a  familiar  para 
graph,  "I  met  with  an  odd  volume  of  the  Spectator." 
Anticipating  Dr.  Johnson's  advice  by  half  a  century, 
he  gave  his  days  and  nights  to  painstaking  study  and 
imitation  of  Addison  till  he  had  mastered  that  style 
— "familiar  but  not  coarse,  and  elegant  but  not 
ostentatious" — which  several  generations  of  Eng- 


36  AMERICANS 

lish  essayists  have  sought  to  attain.  All  the  world 
has  heard  how  Franklin's  career  as  a  writer  began 
with  an  anonymous  contribution  stealthily  slipped 
under  the  door  of  his  brother's  printing-house  at 
night,  and  in  the  morning  approved  for  publication 
by  his  brother's  circle  of  "writing  friends."  Pro 
fessor  Smyth  is  inclined  to  identify  this  contribution 
with  the  first  of  fourteen  humorous  papers  with 
Latin  mottoes  signed  "Silence  Dogood,"  *  which  ap 
peared  fortnightly  in  the  New  England  C  our  ant 
from  March  to  October,  1722.  In  this  year  Ben 
jamin  was  in  charge  of  the  Courant  during  his 
brother's  imprisonment  for  printing  matter  offensive 
to  the  Assembly;  and  when,  on  repetition  of  the 
offence,  the  master  was  forbidden  to  publish  his 
journal,  it  was  continued  in  the  name  of  the  appren 
tice.  In  this  situation  James  became  jealous  and 
overbearing,  and  Benjamin  became  insubordinate. 
When  it  grew  evident  that  there  was  not  room 
enough  in  Boston  for  them  both,  the  younger 
brother  left  his  indentures  behind,  and  in  1723  made 
his  memorable  flight  to  Philadelphia. 

Shortly  after  his  arrival  in  the  Quaker  city,  he 
found  employment  with  the  second  printer  in  Phila 
delphia,  Samuel  Keimer — a  curious  person  who  kept 
the  Mosaic  law.  In  1724,  encouraged  by  the  facile 


1  The  Writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin. — Collected  and  edited  by 
Albert  Henry  Smyth.  New  York:  1907.  Vol.  II,  p.  1.  The 
Dogood  Papers  were  claimed  by  Franklin  in  the  first  draft  of  his 
Autobiography,  and  they  have  been  long  accredited  to  him;  but 
they  were  first  included  in  his  collected  works  by  Professor  Smyth. 


FRANKLIN  37 

promises  of  Governor  Keith,  he  went  to  England  in 
the  expectation  that  letters  of  credit  and  recommen 
dation  from  his  patron  would  enable  him  to  procure 
a  printing  outfit.  Left  in  the  lurch  by  the  governor, 
he  served  for  something  over  a  year  in  two  great 
London  printing  houses,  kept  free-thinking  and 
rather  loose  company,  and,  in  refutation  of  Wollas- 
ton's  Religion  of  Nature  upon  which  he  happened 
to  be  engaged  in  the  composing-room,  published  in 
1725  his  suppressed  tract  On  Liberty  and  Necessity. 
Returning  to  Philadelphia  in  1726,  he  reentered  the 
employ  of  Keimer;  in  1728  formed  a  brief  partner 
ship  with  Hugh  Meredith,  and  in  1730  married  and 
set  up  for  himself.  In  1728  he  formed  the  famous 
Junto  Club  for  reading,  debating,  and  reforming 
the  world — an  institution  which  developed  into  a 
powerful  organ  of  political  influence.  Shortage  of 
money  in  the  province  prompted  him  to  the  compo 
sition  of  his  Modest  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and 
Necessity  of  Paper  Currency,  1729;  a  service  for 
which  his  friends  in  the  Assembly  rewarded  him  by 
employing  him  to  print  the  money — "a  very  profit 
able  job  and  a  great  help  to  me."  Forestalled  by 
Keimer  in  a  project  for  launching  a  newspaper, 
Franklin  contributed  in  1728-9  to  the  rival  journal 
published  by  Bradford  a  series  of  sprightly  "Busy- 
Body"  papers  in  the  vein  of  the  periodical  essayists. 
Keimer  was  forced  to  sell  out;  and  Franklin  ac 
quired  from  him  the  paper  known  from  October  2, 
1729,  as  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette.  To  this  he  con- 


38  AMERICANS 

tributed,  besides  much  miscellaneous  matter,  such 
pieces  as  the  "Dialogue  Between  Philocles  and 
Horatio  Concerning  Virtue  and  Pleasure,"  the  let 
ters  of  "Anthony  Afterwit"  and  "Alice  Adder- 
tongue,"  "A  Meditation  on  a  Quart  Mug,"  and  "A 
Witch  Trial  at  Mount  Holly."  In  1732  he  began 
to  issue  the  almanacs  containing  the  wit  and  wisdom 
of  "Poor  Richard,"  a  homely  popular  philosopher, 
who  is  only  the  incarnation  of  common  sense,  and 
who  is  consequently  not,  as  has  been  carelessly  as 
sumed,  to  be  identified  with  his  creator. 

By  the  time  he  was  thirty,  Franklin  gave  promise 
of  becoming  by  a  gradual  expansion  of  his  useful 
activities  the  leading  Pennsylvanian.  In  1736  he 
was  chosen  clerk  of  the  General  Assembly,  and  in 
the  following  year  was  appointed  postmaster  of 
Philadelphia.  He  made  both  these  offices  useful  to 
his  printing  business  and  to  his  newspaper.  In  com 
pensation,  he  used  his  newspaper  and  his  business 
influence  to  support  his  measures  for  municipal  im 
provements,  among  the  objects  of  which  may  be 
mentioned:  street-sweeping,  paving,  a  regular  police 
force,  a  fire  company,  a  hospital,  and  a  public 
library.  As  his  business  prospered,  he  expanded 
it  by  forming  partnerships  with  his  promising  work 
men,  and  sending  them  with  printing-presses  into 
other  colonies.  In  1741  he  experimented  with  a 
monthly  publication,  The  General  Magazine  and 
Historical  Chronicle  for  All  the  British  Colonies  in 
America;  this  monthly,  notable  as  the  second  issued 


FRANKLIN  39 

in  America,  expired  with  the  sixth  number.  In  1742 
he  invented  the  stove  of  which  he  published  a  de 
scription  in  1744  as  An  Account  of  the  New  In 
vented  Pennsyhanian  Fire  Places.  In  1743  he  drew 
up  proposals  for  an  academy  which  eventually  be 
came  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  in  1744 
he  founded  the  American  Philosophical  Society.  In 
1746  he  witnessed  Spence's  electrical  experiments  in 
Boston,  bought  the  apparatus,  and  repeated  the 
experiments  in  Philadelphia,  where  interest  in  the 
new  science  was  further  stimulated  that  year  by  a 
present  of  a  Leyden  jar  given  to  the  Library  Com 
pany  by  the  English  experimenter,  Peter  Collinson. 
To  this  English  friend  Franklin  made  extended 
reports  of  his  earlier  electrical  investigations  in  the 
form  of  letters,  which  Collinson  published  in  Lon 
don  in  1751  with  the  title  "Experiments  and  Obser 
vations  in  Electricity,  Made  at  Philadelphia  in 
America,  by  Mr.  Benjamin  Franklin"  In  1752  he 
showed  the  identity  of  lightning  and  electricity  by 
his  kite  experiment,  and  invented  the  lightning  rod. 
In  1748,  being  assured  of  a  competency,  he  had 
turned  over  his  business  to  his  foreman,  David  Hall, 
and  purposed  devoting  the  rest  of  his  life  to  philo 
sophical  enquiries.  But  he  had  inextricably  involved 
himself  in  the  affairs  of  his  community,  which,  as 
soon  as  it  found  him  at  leisure,  "laid  hold"  of  him, 
as  he  says,  for  its  own  purposes — "every  part  of  the 
civil  government,  and  almost  at  the  same  time,  im 
posing  some  duty  upon  me."  He  was  made  a  justice 


40  AMERICANS 

of  the  peace,  member  of  the  common  council,  alder 
man,  and  was  chosen  burgess  to  represent  the  city  of 
Philadelphia  in  the  General  Assembly.  In  1753  he 
was  appointed  jointly  with  William  Hunter  to  exer 
cise  the  office  of  postmaster-general  of  America.  In 
1754,  as  a  member  of  the  Pennsylvania  commission 
he  laid  before  the  colonial  congress  at  Albany  the 
"Plan  of  Union,"  adopted  by  the  commissioners. 
In  1755  he  displayed  remarkable  energy,  ability, 
and  public  spirit  in  providing  transportation  for 
General  Braddock's  ill-fated  expedition  against  the 
French;  and  in  the  following  year  he  himself  took 
command  of  a  volunteer  military  organization  for 
the  protection  of  the  northwest  frontier.  In  1757 
he  was  sent  to  England  to  present  the  long-standing 
grievances  of  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  against 
the  proprietary  for  obstructing  legislation  designed 
to  throw  upon  them  a  fair  share  of  the  expense  of 
government. 

Though  Franklin's  political  mission  was  not 
wholly  successful,  his  residence  in  England  from 
1757  to  1762  was  highly  profitable  to  him.  It  de 
veloped  his  talent  as  a  negotiator  of  public  business 
with  strangers;  it  enabled  him  to  consider  British 
colonial  policies  from  English  points  of  view;  and  it 
afforded  him  many  opportunities  for  general  self- 
improvement.  After  a  fruitless  effort  to  obtain 
satisfaction  from  the  representatives  of  the  Penn 
family,  dismissing  as  impractical  the  hope  of  pro 
curing  for  Pennsylvania  a  royal  charter,  he  appealed 


FRANKLIN  41 

to  the  Crown  to  exempt  the  Assembly  from  the 
influence  of  proprietary  instructions  and  to  make 
the  proprietary  estates  bear  a  more  equitable  pro 
portion  of  the  taxes.  To  get  the  Assembly's  case 
before  the  public,  he  collaborated  with  an  unknown 
hand  on  An  Historical  Review  of  the  Constitution 
and  Government  of  Pennsylvania,  published  in 
1759.  The  result  was  a  compromise  which  in  the 
circumstances  he  regarded  as  a  victory.  His  interest 
in  the  wider  questions  of  imperial  policy  he  exhibited 
in  1760  by  aspersing  the  advocates  of  a  hasty  and 
inconclusive  peace  with  France  in  his  stinging  little 
skit,  Of  the  Meanes  of  Disposing  the  Enemies  to 
Peace,  which  he  presented  as  an  extract  from  the 
work  of  a  Jesuit  historian.  In  1760,  also,  he  was 
joint  author  with  Richard  Jackson  of  a  notably  in 
fluential  argument  for  the  retention  of  Canada,  The 
Interest  of  Great  Britain  Considered  with  Regard 
to  Her  Colonies;  to  which  was  appended  his  Obser 
vations  Concerning  the  Increase  of  Mankind,  Peo 
pling  of  Countries,  etc.  In  the  intervals  of  business, 
he  sat  for  his  portrait,  attended  the  theatre,  played 
upon  the  armonica,  experimented  with  electricity 
and  heat,  made  a  tour  of  the  Low  Countries,  visited 
the  principal  cities  of  England  and  Scotland,  re 
ceived  honorary  degrees  from  the  universities,  and 
enjoyed  the  society  of  Collinson,  Priestley,  Price, 
Hume,  Adam  Smith,  Robertson,  and  Kames.  He 
returned  to  America  in  the  latter  part  of  1762.  In 
1763  he  made  a  1,600-mile  tour  of  the  northern 


42  AMERICANS 

provinces  to  inspect  the  post-offices.  In  the  follow 
ing  year  he  was  again  in  the  thick  of  Pennsylvania 
politics,  working  with  the  party  in  the  Assembly 
which  sought  to  have  the  proprietary  government 
of  the  province  replaced  by  a  royal  charter.  In 
support  of  this  movement  he  published  in  1764  his 
Cool  Thoughts  on  the  Present  Situation  of  our  Pub 
lic  Afairs  and  his  Preface  to  the  Speech  of  Joseph 
Galloway,  a  brilliant  and  blasting  indictment  of  the 
proprietors,  Thomas  and  Richard  Penn. 

In  the  fall  of  1764  Franklin  was  sent  again  to 
England  by  the  Assembly  to  petition  for  a  royal 
charter  and  to  express  the  Assembly's  views  with 
regard  to  Grenville's  Stamp  Act,  then  impending. 
On  July  11,  1765,  after  the  obnoxious  measure  had 
been  passed  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  Franklin 
wrote  to  Charles  Thomson:  "Depend  upon  it,  my 
good  neighbour,  I  took  every  step  in  my  power  to 
prevent  the  passing  of  the  Stamp  Act.  .  .  .  But  the 
Tide  was  too  strong  against  us.  The  nation  was 
provoked  by  American  Claims  of  Independence,  and 
all  Parties  joined  in  resolving  by  this  act  to  settle 
the  point.  We  might  as  well  have  hindered  the 
sun's  setting."  This  letter  and  one  or  two  others 
of  about  the  same  date  express  a  patient  submission 
to  the  inevitable.  As  soon,  however,  as  Franklin 
was  fully  apprised  of  the  fierce  flame  of  opposition 
which  the  passage  of  the  act  had  kindled  in  the 
colonies,  he  caught  the  spirit  of  the  constituents,  and 
threw  himself  sternly  into  the  struggle  for  its  repeal. 


FRANKLIN  43 

In  1766  he  underwent  his  famous  examination  before 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  attitude  of  the 
Colonies  towards  the  collection  of  the  new  taxes. 
The  report  of  this  examination,  which  was  promptly 
published,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  im 
pressive  pieces  of  dramatic  dialogue  produced  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  After  the  repeal,  Franklin 
received  recognition  at  home  in  the  shape  of  new 
duties:  in  1768  he  was  appointed  agent  for  Georgia; 
in  1769,  for  New  Jersey;  in  1770,  for  Massa 
chusetts.  In  the  summer  of  1766  he  visited  Ger 
many;  the  following  summer  he  visited  Paris;  and 
he  was  in  France  again  for  a  month  in  1769.  His 
pen  in  these  years  was  employed  mainly  in  corre 
spondence  and  in  communications  to  the  newspapers, 
in  which  he  pointedly  set  forth  the  causes  which 
threatened  a  permanent  breach  between  the  mother 
country  and  the  colonies.  In  1773  he  published  in 
the  Gentleman's  Magazine  two  little  masterpieces 
of  irony  which  Swift  might  have  been  pleased  to 
sign :  An  Edict  By  The  King  of  Prussia  and  Rules 
By  Which  A  Great  Empire  May  Be  Reduced  To  A 
Small  One,  In  1774,  in  consequence  of  his  activity 
in  exposing  Governor  Hutchinson's  proposals  for 
the  military  intimidation  of  Massachusetts,  Frank 
lin  was  subjected  before  the  Privy  Council  to 
virulent  and  scurrilous  abuse  from  Attorney-General 
Wedderburn.  This  onslaught  it  was,  accentuated 
by  his  dismissal  from  the  office  of  Postmaster-Gen 
eral,  which  began  to  curdle  in  Franklin  his  sincere 


44  AMERICANS 

long-cherished  hope  of  an  ultimate  reconciliation. 
It  is  an  ominous  coincidence  that  in  this  year  of  his 
great  humiliation  he  sent  with  a  letter  of  recom 
mendation  to  his  son-in-law  in  Philadelphia,  Thomas 
Paine,  an  obscure  Englishman  of  Whiggish  temper, 
two  years  later  to  become  the  fieriest  advocate  of 
American  independence.  In  disgrace  with  the  Court, 
Franklin  lingered  in  England  to  exhaust  the  last 
possibilities  of  amicable  adjustment;  petitioning  the 
king,  conferring  with  Burke  and  Chatham,  and  curi 
ously  arranging  for  secret  negotiations  with  the 
go-betweens  of  the  Ministry  over  the  chess  board 
of  Lord  Howe's  sister.  He  sailed  from  England 
in  March,  1775,  half-convinced  that  the  Ministry 
were  bent  upon  provoking  an  open  rebellion.  When 
he  arrived  in  Philadelphia,  he  heard  what  had  hap 
pened  at  Lexington  and  Concord.  On  July  5,  1775, 
he  wrote  a  letter  to  an  English  friend  of  thirty 
years  standing,  William  Strahan,  then  a  member 
of  Parliament;  it  was  shortened  like  a  Roman  sword 
and  sharpened  to  this  point : 

You  and  I  were  long  Friends: — You  are  now 
my  Enemy, — and  I  am 

Yours, 

B.  FRANKLIN. 

As  Franklin  was  sixty-nine  years  old  in  1775,  he 
might  fairly  have  retreated  to  his  library,  and  have 
left  the  burden  of  the  future  state  to  younger  hands. 
He  had  hardly  set  foot  on  shore,  however,  before 


FRANKLIN  45 

the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  elected  him  delegate  to 
the  first  Continental  Congress,  where  his  tried 
sagacity  was  enlisted  in  organizing  the  country's 
political,  economic,  and  military  resources  for  the 
great  conflict.  On  July  7,  1775,  the  old  man  wrote 
to  Priestley:  "My  time  was  never  more  fully  em 
ployed.  In  the  morning  at  six,  I  am  at  the  Com 
mittee  of  Safety,  appointed  by  the  Assembly  to  put 
the  province  in  a  state  of  defence;  which  commit 
tee  holds  till  near  nine,  when  I  am  at  the  Congress, 
and  that  sits  till  after  four  in  the  afternoon."  In 
the  period  slightly  exceeding  a  year  previous  to  his 
departure  for  France,  he  served  on  innumerable 
committees  of  the  Congress,  was  made  Postmaster 
General  of  the  Colonies,  presided  over  the  Consti 
tutional  Convention  of  Pennsylvania,  was  sent  on 
a  mission  to  Canada,  assisted  in  drafting  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  and  signed  it. 

In  October,  1776,  he  sailed  for  France  on  a  com 
mission  of  the  Congress  to  negotiate  a  treaty  of 
alliance,  which  was  concluded  in  February,  1778, 
after  the  surrender  of  Burgoyne  had  inspired  con 
fidence  in  the  prospects  of  the  American  arms.  In 
September,  1778,  he  was  appointed  plenipotentiary 
to  the  court  of  France.  Clothed  with  large  powers, 
he  transacted  in  the  next  few  years  an  almost  in 
credible  amount  of  difficult  business  for  his  country. 
He  obtained  from  the  French  government  the  re 
peated  loans  which  made  possible  the  carrying  on  of 
a  long  war;  he  made  contracts  for  clothing  and 


46  AMERICANS 

ammunitions;  he  dissuaded  or  recommended  to  Con 
gress  foreign  applicants  for  commissions  in  the 
colonial  army;  he  arranged  exchanges  of  prisoners- 
of-war;  he  equipped  and  to  some  extent  directed 
the  operations  of  privateers;  he  supplied  informa 
tion  to  many  Europeans  emigrating  to  America;  he 
made  treaties  of  amity  and  commerce  with  Sweden 
and  Prussia.  With  all  this  engrossing  business  on 
his  hands,  he  found  time  to  achieve  an  immense  per 
sonal  popularity.  He  was  not  merely  respected  as  a 
masterly  diplomat;  he  was  lionized  and  idolized 
as  the  great  natural  philosopher,  the  august  cham 
pion  of  liberty,  and  the  friend  of  humanity.  In  the 
press  of  public  affairs,  never  losing  interest  in  scien 
tific  matters,  he  served  on  a  royal  French  commis 
sion  to  investigate  Mesmerism;  sent  to  his  foreign 
correspondents  ingenious  geological  and  meteorolog 
ical  conjectures;  and  transmitted  to  the  Royal  So 
ciety  reports  on  French  experiments  in  aeronautics. 
He  entertained  with  a  certain  lavishness  at  his 
house  in  Passy;  and  he  was  a  frequent  diner-out, 
adored  for  his  wit  and  good  humor,  in  the  intimate 
coteries  of  Mme.  Helvetius  and  Mme.  Brillon.  He 
set  up  for  the  amusement  of  himself  and  his  friends 
a  private  press  in  Passy,  on  which  he  printed  a 
number  of  bagatelles  of  an  accomplished  and  charm 
ing  levity:  The  Ephemera,  1778;  The  Morals  of 
Chess,  1779;  The  Whistle,  1779;  The  Dialogue 
Between  Franklin  and  the  Gout,  1780.  In  1784 
he  resumed  work  on  his  unfinished  autobiography, 


FRANKLIN  47 

and  published  Advice  to  such  as  would  remove  to 
America  and  Remarks  Concerning  the  Savages  of 
North  America.  In  his  residence  in  France  he  be 
gan  seriously  to  feel  the  siege  of  gout,  the  stone, 
and  old  age.  In  1781,  in  reply  to  repeated  suppli 
cations  for  leave  to  go  home  and  die,  Congress  had 
appointed  him  of  the  commission  to  negotiate  a 
treaty  of  peace  between  England  and  the  United 
States.  This  last  great  task  was  completed  in  1785. 
In  midsummer  of  that  year  he  said  a  regretful  fare 
well  to  his  affectionate  French  friends,  received  the 
king's  portrait  set  in  four  hundred  diamonds,  and 
in  one  of  the  royal  litters  was  carried  down  to  his 
point  of  embarkation  at  Havre  de  Grace. 

Franklin  arrived  in  Philadelphia  in  September, 
1785,  resolved  to  set  his  house  in  order.  He  was 
soon  made  aware  that,  like  the  hero  in  the  Con 
quest  of  Granada,  he  had  not  "leisure  yet  to  die." 
He  was  overwhelmed  with  congratulations;  or,  as 
he  put  it  with  characteristic  modesty  of  phrase  in 
a  letter  to  his  English  friend  Mrs.  Hewson:  "I  had 
the  happiness  of  finding  my  family  well,  and  of  be 
ing  very  kindly  received  by  my  Country  folk."  In 
the  month  after  his  arrival  he  was  elected  President 
of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania;  and  the  honor  was 
thrust  upon  him  again  in  1786  and  in  1787.  In  a 
letter  of  November  14,  1785,  he  says:  "I  had  not 
firmness  enough  to  resist  the  unanimous  desire  of 
my  country  folks ;  and  I  find  myself  harnessed  again 
in  their  service  for  another  year.  They  engrossed 


48  AMERICANS 

the  prime  of  my  life.  They  have  eaten  my  flesh, 
and  seem  resolved  now  to  pick  my  bones."  In  1787 
he  was  chosen  a  delegate  to  the  convention  to  frame 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States — an  instru 
ment  which  he  deemed  not  perfect  yet  as  near  per 
fection  as  the  joint  wisdom  of  any  numerous  body 
of  men  could  carry  it,  handicapped  by  "their  preju 
dices,  their  passions,  their  local  interests,  and  their 
selfish  views."  In  1789,  as  President  of  the  Aboli 
tion  Society,  Franklin  signed  a  memorial  against 
slavery  which  was  laid  before  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives;  and  on  March  23,  1790,  less  than  a 
month  before  his  death,  he  wrote  for  the  Federal 
Gazette,  an  ironical  justification  of  the  enslaving  of 
Christians  by  African  Mohammedans — quite  in  the 
vein  of  the  celebrated  Edict  of  the  King  of  Prussia. 
As  the  shadows  thickened  about  him,  he  settled  his 
estate,  paid  his  compliments  to  his  friends,  and  de 
parted,  on  the  seventeenth  day  of  April,  1790,  in 
his  eighty-fifth  year. 

In  the  matter  of  religion  Franklin  was  distinctly 
a  product  of  the  eighteenth  century  enlightenment. 
He  took  his  direction  in  boyhood  and  early  man 
hood  from  deistical  writers  like  Pope,  Collins, 
Shaftesbury,  and  Mandeville.  At  various  periods  of 
his  life  he  drew  up  articles  of  belief,  which  generally 
included  recognition  of  one  God,  the  providential 
government  of  the  world,  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  and  divine  justice.  To  profess  faith  in  as 
much  religion  as  this,  he  found  emotionally  grati- 


FRANKLIN  49 

fying,  socially  expedient,  and  conformable  to  the 
common  sense  of  mankind.  He  might  have  sub 
scribed  without  hesitation  to  both  the  positive  and 
negative  dogmas  of  the  religion  civile  formulated 
by  Rousseau  in  the  Contrat  Social.  In  his  later 
years  he  was  in  sympathetic  relation  with  Paine, 
Price,  and  Priestley.  He  was,  however,  of  a  fortu 
nately  earlier  generation  than  these  English  "here 
tics,"  and  certain  other  circumstances  enabled  him 
to  keep  the  temper  of  his  heterodoxy  sweet,  while 
theirs  grew  acidulous,  and  to  walk  serenely  in  ways 
which  for  them  were  embittered  by  the  odium 
theologicum.  His  earlier  advent  upon  the  eigh 
teenth-century  scene  made  possible  the  unfolding 
and  comfortable  settlement  of  his  religious  ideas 
before  deism  had  clearly  allied  itself  with  political 
radicalism  and  edged  its  sword  for  assault  upon  in 
spired  Bible  and  established  church  as  powers  fed 
erate  with  political  orthodoxy  in  upholding  the  an 
cient  regime.  Among  the  diverse  denominational 
bodies  in  Pennsylvania  his  perfectly  genuine  toler 
ance  and  his  unfailing  tact  helped  him  to  maintain 
a  friendly  neutrality  between  parties  which  were 
far  from  friendly.  Like  Lord  Chesterfield,  he  sin 
cerely  believed  in  the  decency  and  propriety  of  going 
to  church;  and  he  went  himself  when  he  could  en 
dure  the  preachers.  He  advised  his  daughter  to 
go  constantly,  "whoever  preaches."  He  made 
pecuniary  contributions  to  all  the  leading  denomina 
tions  in  Philadelphia;  respectfully  acknowledged 


50  AMERICANS 

the  good  features  of  each;  and  undertook  to  unite  in 
his  own  creed  the  common  and,  as  he  thought,  the 
essential  features  of  all.  Man  of  the  world  as  he 
was,  he  enjoyed  the  warm  friendship  of  good 
Quakers,  good  Presbyterians,  Whitefield,  the 
Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  and  his  French  abbes.  His 
abstention  from  theological  controversy  was  doubt 
less  due  in  part  to  a  shrewd  regard  for  his  own  in 
terest  and  influence  as  a  business  man  and  a  public 
servant;  but  it  was  due  in  perhaps  equal  measure 
to  his  profound  indifference  to  metaphysical  ques 
tions  unrelated  to  practical  conduct.  "Emanci 
pated"  in  childhood  and  unmolested  in  the  inde 
pendence  of  his  mind,  he  reached  maturity  without 
that  acrimony  of  free  thought  incident  to  those  who 
attain  independence  late  and  have  revenges  to  take. 
He  was  consistently  opposed  to  the  imposition  of 
religious  tests  by  constitutional  authority.  But  in 
the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1787  he  offered 
a  motion  in  favor  of  holding  daily  prayers  before 
the  deliberations  of  the  Assembly,  for  as  he  de 
clared,  "the  longer  I  live,  the  more  convincing 
proofs  I  see  of  this  Truth,  that  God  governs  In  the 
Affairs  of  Men."  With  his  progress  in  eminence 
and  years,  he  seems  to  have  been  somewhat 
strengthened  in  Cicero's  conviction  that  so  puissant 
a  personality  as  his  own  could  not  utterly  perish, 
and  he  derived  a  kind  of  classical  satisfaction  from 
the  reflection  that  this  feeling  was  in  concurrence 
with  the  common  opinions  of  mankind.  A  few 


FRANKLIN  51 

weeks  before  his  death  he  admitted,  in  a  remark 
able  letter  to  Ezra  Stiles,  a  doubt  as  to  the  divinity 
of  Jesus;  but  he  remarked  with  his  characteristic 
tranquillity  that  he  thought  it  "needless  to  busy 
myself  with  it  now,  when  I  expect  soon  an  Oppor 
tunity  of  knowing  the  Truth  with  less  Trouble." 
Not  elate,  like  Emerson,  yet  quite  unawed,  this 
imitator  of  Jesus  and  Socrates  walked  in  this  world 
and  prepared  for  his  ease  in  Zion. 

Franklin  set  himself  in  youth  to  the  study  of 
"moral  perfection,"  and  the  work  which  only  great 
public  business  prevented  his  leaving  as  his  literary 
monument  was  to  have  been  a  treatise  on  the  "art  of 
virtue."  His  merits,  however,  in  both  the  theory 
and  practice  of  the  moral  life  have  been  seriously 
called  in  question.  It  is  alleged  that  his  standards 
were  low  and  that  he  did  not  live  up  to  them.  It 
must  be  conceded  on  the  one  hand  that  he  had  a 
natural  son  who  became  governor  of  New  Jersey, 
and  on  the  other  hand  that  industry  and  frugality, 
which  most  of  us  place  among  the  minor,  he  placed 
among  the  major  virtues.  When  one  has  referred 
the  "errata"  of  his  adolescence  to  animal  spirits, 
"free  thinking,"  and  bad  company;  and  when  one 
has  explained  certain  laxities  of  his  maturity  by 
alluding  to  the  indulgent  temper  of  the  French 
society  in  which  he  then  lived;  one  may  as  well 
candidly  admit  that  St.  Francis  made  chastity  a 
more  conspicuous  jewel  in  his  crown  of  virtues  than 
did  Dr.  Franklin.  And  when  one  has  pointed  out 


52  AMERICANS 

that  the  prudential  philosophy  of  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac  was  rather  a  collection  of  popular  wis 
dom  than  an  original  contribution;  and  when  one 
has  called  attention  to  the  special  reasons  for  magni 
fying  economic  virtues  in  a  community  of  impecuni 
ous  colonists  and  pioneers;  one  may  as  well  frankly 
acknowledge  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  precepts 
of  the  great  printer  to  shake  a  man's  egotism  like 
the  shattering  paradoxes  of  the  Beatitudes  nor  like 
the  Christian  Morals  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  to 
make  his  heart  elate.  Franklin  had  nothing  of  what 
pietists  call  a  "realizing  sense"  of  sin  or  of  the  need 
for  mystical  regeneration  and  justification — facul 
ties  so  richly  present  in  his  contemporary  Jonathan 
Edwards.  His  cool  calculating  reason,  having  sur 
veyed  the  fiery  battleground  of  the  Puritan  con 
science,  reported  that  things  are  forbidden  because 
hurtful,  not  hurtful  because  forbidden.  Guided  by 
this  utilitarian  principle,  he  simplified  his  religion 
and  elaborated  his  morality.  His  system  included, 
however,  much  more  than  maxims  of  thrift  and  pru 
dent  self-regard,  and  to  assert  that  he  set  up 
wealth  as  the  summum  bonum  is  a  sheer  libel.  He 
commended  diligence  in  business  as  the  means  to  a 
competency;  he  commended  a  competency  as  a  safe 
guard  to  virtue;  and  he  commended  virtue  as  the 
prerequisite  to  happiness.  The  temple  that  he 
reared  to  Moral  Perfection  was  built  of  thirteen 
stones:  temperance,  silence,  order,  resolution,  fru 
gality,  industry,  sincerity,  justice,  moderation,  clean- 


FRANKLIN  S3 

liness,  tranquillity,  chastity,  and  humility — the  last 
added  on  the  advice  of  a  Quaker.  He  wrought 
upon  the  structure  with  the  method  of  a  monk  and 
he  recorded  his  progress  with  the  regularity  of  a 
book-keeper.  The  presiding  spirit  in  the  edifice, 
which  made  it  something  more  than  a  private 
oratory,  was  a  rational  and  active  benevolence  to 
wards  his  fellow  mortals  in  every  quarter  of  the 
earth.  The  wide-reaching  friendliness  in  Franklin 
may  be  distinguished  in  two  ways  from  the  roseate 
humanitarian  enthusiasm  of  the  Savoyard  Vicar. 
It  was  not  begotten  by  a  theory  of  "natural  good 
ness"  nor  fostered  by  millennial  expectations  but 
was  born  of  sober  experience  with  the  utility  of 
good  will  in  establishing  satisfactory  and  fruitful 
relations  among  men.  It  found  expression  not  in 
rhetorical  periods  but  in  numberless  practical  means 
and  measures  for  ameliorating  the  human  lot.  By 
no  mystical  intuition  but  by  the  common  light  of 
reason  the  "prudential  philosopher"  discovered  and 
acted  upon  the  truth,  that  the  greatest  happiness 
that  can  come  to  a  man  in  this  world  is  to  devote 
the  full  strength  of  body  and  mind  to  the  service 
of  his  fellow  men.  Judged  either  by  his  principles 
or  by  his  performance,  Franklin's  moral  breadth  and 
moral  elevation  have  been  absurdly  underestimated. 
It  is  perhaps  in  the  field  of  politics  that  Franklin 
exhibits  the  most  marked  development  of  his  power 
and  his  vision.  A  realistic  inductive  thinker,  well 
versed  in  the  rudiments  of  his  subject  long  before 


54  AMERICANS 

the  revolutionary  theorists  handled  it,  he  was  not 
rendered  by  any  preconception  of  abstract  rights 
indocile  to  the  lessons  of  his  immense  political  ex 
perience.  He  formulated  his  conceptions  in  the 
thick  of  existing  conditions,  and  always  with  refer 
ence  to  what  was  expedient  and  possible  as  well  as 
to  what  was  desirable.  He  served  his  apprentice 
ship  in  the  Philadelphia  Junto  Club,  which  at  its 
inception  was  little  more  than  a  village  improve 
ment  society,  but  which  threw  out  branches  till  it 
became  a  power  in  the  province,  and  a  considerable 
factor  in  the  affairs  of  the  colonies.  In  this  asso 
ciation  he  learned  the  importance  of  cooperation, 
mastered  the  tactics  of  organization,  practiced  the 
art  of  getting  propaganda  afoot,  and  discovered  the 
great  secret  of  converting  private  desires  into  public 
demands.  In  proposing  in  1754  his  plan  for  a  union 
of  the  colonies  he  was  applying  to  larger  units  the 
principle  of  cooperative  action  by  which  he  had  built 
up  what  we  might  call  today  his  "machine"  in  Penn 
sylvania.  He  had  in  too  large  measure  the  in 
stincts  and  the  ideas  of  a  leader,  and  he  had  too 
much  experience  with  the  conflicting  prejudices  and 
the  resultant  compromises  of  popular  assemblies,  to 
feel  any  profound  reverence  for  the  "collective  wis 
dom"  of  the  people.  "If  all  officers  appointed  by 
governors  were  always  men  of  merit,"  he  wrote  in 
his  Dialogue  Concerning  the  Present  State  of 
Affairs  in  Pennsylvania,  "it  would  be  wrong  ever  to 
hazard  a  popular  election."  That  his  belief  in 


FRANKLIN  55 

popular  representation  was  due  as  much  to  his  sense 
of  its  political  expediency  as  to  his  sense  of  its  politi 
cal  justice  is  suggested  by  a  passage  in  his  letter  on 
the  imposition  of  direct  taxes  addressed  to  Gov 
ernor  Shirley,  December  18,  1754:  "In  matters  of 
general  concern  to  the  people,  and  especially  where 
burthens  are  to  be  laid  upon  them,  it  is  of  use  to 
consider,  as  well  what  they  will  be  apt  to  think  and 
say,  as  what  they  ought  to  think."  His  sojourn 
in  England  widened  his  horizons  but  not  beyond  the 
bounds  of  his  nationality.  As  agent,  he  felt  him 
self  essentially  a  colonial  Englishman  pleading  for 
the  extension  of  English  laws  to  British  subjects 
across  the  sea,  and  playing  up  to  the  Imperial  policy 
of  crushing  out  the  colonizing  and  commercial 
rivalry  of  France.  The  ultimate  failure  of  his  mis 
sion  of  reconciliation  effected  no  sudden  transfor 
mation  of  his  political  ideas;  it  rather  overwhelmed 
him  with  disgust  at  the  folly,  the  obstinacy,  and  the 
corruption  rampant  among  English  politicians  of 
the  period.  He  returned  to  the  arms  of  his  people 
because  he  had  been  hurled  from  the  arms  of  his 
king,  and  he  embraced  their  new  principles  because 
he  was  sure  they  could  not  be  worse  applied  than 
his  old  ones.  His  respect  for  the  popular  will  was 
inevitably  heightened  by  his  share  in  executing  it 
in  the  thrilling  days  when  he  was  helping  his  fellow 
countrymen  to  declare  their  independence,  and  was 
earning  the  superb  epigraph  of  Turgot :  Eripuit  ful- 
men  coelo  sceptrumque  tyrannis.  His  official  resi- 


56  AMERICANS 

dence  in  France  completely  dissolved  his  former 
antagonism  to  that  country.  In  the  early  stages 
of  the  conflict  his  wrath  was  bitter  enough  towards 
England,  but  long  before  it  was  over  he  had  taken 
the  ground  of  radical  pacificism,  reiterating  his  con 
viction  that  "there  is  no  good  war  and  no  bad 
peace."  He  who  had  financed  the  Revolution  had 
seen  too  much  non-productive  expenditure  of  moral 
and  physical  capital  to  believe  in  the  appeal  to  arms. 
If  nations  required  enlargement  of  their  territories, 
it  was  a  mere  matter  of  arithmetic,  he  contended, 
to  show  that  the  cheaper  way  was  to  purchase  it. 
"Justice,"  he  declared,  "is  as  strictly  due  between 
neighbor  nations  as  between  neighbor  citizens, 
.  .  .  and  a  nation  that  makes  an  unjust  war  is 
only  a  great  gang."  So  far  as  he  was  able,  he 
mitigated  the  afflictions  of  noncombatants.  He  pro 
posed  by  international  law  to  exempt  from  peril 
fishermen  and  farmers  and  the  productive  workers 
of  the  world.  He  ordered  the  privateersmen  under 
his  control  to  safeguard  the  lives  and  property  of 
explorers  and  men  of  science  belonging  to  the  enemy 
country;  and  he  advocated  for  the  future  the  aboli 
tion  of  the  custom  of  commissioning  privateers.  In 
the  treaty  which  he  negotiated  with  Prussia  he  actu 
ally  obtained  the  incorporation  of  an  article  so 
restricting  the  "zone  of  war"  as  to  make  a  war  be 
tween  Prussia  and  the  United  States  under  its  terms 
virtually  impossible.  His  diplomatic  intercourse  in 
Europe  had  opened  his  eyes  to  the  common  interests 


FRANKLIN  57 

of  all  pacific  peoples  and  to  the  inestimable  advan 
tages  of  a  general  amity  among  the  nations.  His 
ultimate  political  ideal  included  nothing  short  of 
the  welfare  and  the  commercial  federation  of  the 
world.  To  that  extent,  at  least,  he  was  a  believer 
in  majority  interests !  It  may  be  further  said  that 
his  political  development  was  marked  by  a  grow 
ing  mastery  of  the  art  of  dealing  with  men  and  by 
a  steady  approximation  of  his  political  to  his  per 
sonal  morality. 

For  the  broad  humanity  of  Franklin's  political 
conceptions  undoubtedly  his  interest  in  the  extension 
of  science  was  partly  responsible.  As  a  scientific 
investigator  he  had  long  been  a  "citizen  of  the 
world,"  and  for  him  not  the  least  bitter  conse 
quence  of  the  war  was  that  it  made  a  break  in  the 
intellectual  brotherhood  of  man.  If  he  had  not 
been  obliged  to  supply  the  army  of  Washington 
with  guns  and  ammunition,  he  might  have  been  en 
gaged  in  the  far  more  congenial  task  of  supplying 
the  British  Academy  with  food  for  philosophical 
discussion.  He  could  not  but  resent  the  brutal 
antagonisms  which  had  rendered  intellectual  cooper 
ation  with  his  English  friends  impossible,  and  which 
had  frustrated  his  cherished  hope  of  devoting  his 
ripest  years  to  philosophical  researches.  A  natural 
endowment  he  certainly  possessed  which  would  have 
qualified  him  in  happier  circumstances  for  even  more 
distinguished  service  than  he  actually  performed 
in  extending  the  frontiers  of  knowledge.  He  had 


58  AMERICANS 

the  powerfully  developed  curiosity  of  the  explorer 
and  the  inventor,  ever  busily  prying  into  the  causes 
of  things,  ever  speculating  upon  the  consequences 
of  novel  combinations.  His  native  inquisitiveness 
had  been  stimulated  by  a  young  civilization's  mani 
fold  necessities,  mothering  manifold  inventions,  and 
had  been  supplemented  by  a  certain  moral  and  ideal 
izing  passion  for  improvement.  The  practical 
nature  of  many  of  his  devices,  his  absorption  in 
agriculture  and  navigation,  his  preoccupation  with 
stoves  and  chimneys,  the  image  of  him  firing  the 
gas  of  ditch  water  or  pouring  oil  on  troubled  waves, 
and  the  celebrity  of  the  kite  incident  rather  tend  to 
fix  an  impression  that  he  was  but  a  tactful  empiricist 
and  a  lucky  dilettante  of  discovery.  It  is  interesting 
in  this  connection  to  note  that  he  confesses  his  lack 
of  patience  for  verification.  His  prime  scientific 
faculty,  as  he  himself  felt,  was  the  imagination 
which  bodies  forth  the  shapes  and  relations  of 
things  unknown,  which  constructs  the  theory  and 
the  hypothesis.  His  mind  was  a  teeming  warren 
of  hints  and  suggestions.  He  loved  rather  to  start 
than  to  pursue  the  hare.  Happily  what  he  deemed 
his  excessive  penchant  for  forming  hypotheses  was 
safeguarded  by  his  perfect  readiness  to  hear  all  that 
could  be  urged  against  them.  He  wished  not  his 
view  but  truth  to  prevail — which  explains  the  win 
some  cordiality  of  his  demeanor  towards  other 
savants.  His  unflagging  correspondence  with  in 
vestigators,  his  subscription  to  learned  publications, 


FRANKLIN  59 

his  active  membership  in  philosophical  societies  and 
his  enterprise  in  founding  schools  and  academies 
all  betoken  his  prescience  of  the  wide  domain  which 
science  had  to  conquer  and  of  the  necessity  for  co 
operation  in  the  task  of  subduing  it.  Franklin  was 
so  far  a  Baconian  that  he  sought  to  avoid  unfruitful 
speculation  and  to  unite  contemplation  and  action 
in  a  stricter  embrace  for  the  generation  of  knowl 
edge  useful  to  man.  But  in  refutation  of  any  charge 
that  he  was  a  narrow-minded  utilitarian  and  lacked 
the  liberal  views  and  long  faith  of  the  modern  scien 
tific  spirit  may  be  adduced  his  stunning  retort  to  a 
query  as  to  the  usefulness  of  the  balloons  then  on 
trial  in  France:  "What  is  the  use  of  a  new  born 
baby?" 

Of  Franklin's  style  the  highest  praise  is  to  declare 
that  it  reveals  the  mental  and  moral  qualities  of 
the  man  himself.  It  is  the  flexible  style  of  a  writer 
who  has  learned  the  craft  of  expression  by  studying 
and  imitating  the  virtues  of  many  masters :  the  play 
ful  charm  of  Addison,  the  trenchancy  of  Swift,  the 
concreteness  of  Defoe,  the  urbanity  of  Shaftes- 
bury,  the  homely  directness  of  Bunyan's  dialogue, 
the  unadorned  vigor  of  Tillotson,  and  the  epigram 
matic  force  of  Pope.  His  mature  manner,  how 
ever,  is  imitative  of  nothing  but  the  thoroughly  dis 
ciplined  movement  of  a  versatile  mind  which  has 
never  known  a  moment  of  languor  or  a  moment  of 
uncontrollable  excitement.  Next  to  his  omnipresent 
vitality,  his  most  notable  characteristic  is  the  clear- 


60  AMERICANS 

ness  which  results  from  complete  preliminary  vision 
of  what  is  to  be  said,  and  which  in  a  young  hand 
demands  deliberate  preconsideration.  To  Franklin 
the  ordering  of  his  matter  must  have  become  event 
ually  a  light  task  as,  with  incessant  passing  to  and 
fro  in  his  experience  and  with  the  daily  habit 
of  epistolary  communication,  he  grew  as  familiar 
with  his  intellectual  terrains  as  an  old  field  marshal 
with  the  map  of  Europe.  For  the  writing  of  his 
later  years  is  marked  not  merely  by  clearness  and 
force  but  also  by  the  sovereign  ease  of  a  man  who 
has  long  understood  himself  and  the  interrelations 
of  his  ideas  and  has  ceased  to  make  revolutionary 
discoveries  in  any  portion  of  his  own  nature.  His 
occasional  wrath  does  not  fluster  him  but  rather  in 
tensifies  his  lucidity,  clarifies  his  logic,  and  brightens 
the  ironical  smile  that  accompanies  the  thrust  of 
his  wit.  The  "decent  plainness  and  manly  freedom" 
of  his  ordinary  tone — notes  which  he  admired  in  the 
writings  of  his  maternal  grand-father,  Peter  Folger 
— rise  in  parts  of  his  official  correspondence  to  a 
severity  of  decorum;  for  there  is  a  trace  of  the 
senatorial  in  the  man,  the  dignity  of  antique  Rome. 
He  is  seldom  too  hurried,  even  in  a  private  letter, 
to  gratify  the  ear  by  the  turning  and  cadence  of 
sentence  and  phrase;  and  one  feels  that  the  har 
mony  of  his  periods  is  the  right  and  predestined 
vesture  of  his  essential  blandness  and  suavity  of 
temper.  His  stylistic  drapery,  however,  is  never 
so  smoothed  and  adjusted  as  to  obscure  the  sinewy 


FRANKLIN  61 

vigor  of  his  thought.  His  manner  is  steadily  in  the 
service  of  his  matter.  He  is  adequate,  not  copious; 
for  his  moral  "frugality  and  industry"  prompt  him 
to  eschew  surplusage  and  to  make  his  texture  firm. 
His  regard  for  purity  of  diction  is  classical;  he 
avoids  vulgarity;  he  despises  the  jargon  of  scien 
tific  pedants ;  but  like  Montaigne  he  loves  frank  and 
masculine  speech,  and  he  likes  to  enrich  the  lan 
guage  of  the  well-bred  by  discreet  drafts  upon  the 
burry,  homely,  sententious,  proverbial  language  of 
the  people.  Like  Lord  Bacon  and  like  many  other 
grave  men  among  his  fellow  countrymen,  he  found 
it  difficult  to  avoid  an  opportunity  for  a  jest  even 
when  the  occasion  was  unpropitious;  and  he  never 
sat  below  the  Attic  salt.  When  his  fortune  was 
made  he  put  by  the  pewter  spoon  and  earthenware 
bowl  of  his  apprenticeship  for  silver  and  fine  china. 
His  biographer  reminds  us  that  he  kept  a  well- 
stocked  cellar  at  Passy  and  enjoyed  the  dis 
tinction  of  suffering  from  the  gout.  With  affluence 
and  years  he  acquired  a  "palate,"  and  gave  a  little 
play  to  the  long  repressed  tastes  of  an  Epicurean 
whom  early  destiny  had  cast  upon  a  rockbound 
coast.  The  literary  expression  of  his  autumnal 
festivity  is  to  be  found  in  the  bagatelles.  The  tal 
low  chandler's  son,  having  entered  on  the  cycle  of 
his  development  by  cultivating  thrift  like  Defoe, 
completed  it  like  Lord  Chesterfield  by  cultivating 
"the  graces."  The  Ephemera  proves  that  this  great 
eighteenth  century  rationalist  had  a  fancy.  It  is  no 


62  AMERICANS 

relative,  indeed,  of  that  romantic  spirit  which  pipes 
to  the  whistling  winds  on  the  enchanted  greens  of 
Shakespeare.  It  is  rather  the  classic  sprite  which 
summons  the  little  rosy-winged  Loves  and  Desires 
to  sport  among  the  courtiers  and  philosophers  and 
the  wasp-waited  ladies  in  the  delicate  fete 
champetre  of  Watteau. 


IV 
THE  EMERSONIAN  LIBERATION 

Some  books,  like  some  persons,  convey  to  us  all 
that  they  will  ever  have  to  give  at  a  single  sitting. 
Others  hold  our  attention  profitably  through  two 
or  three  encounters.  Of  the  wives  we  marry  we  ask 
more  than  that;  and  the  books  to  frequent,  the 
books  to  be  shipwrecked  with,  the  great  books  into 
which  rich  and  substantial  lives  have  been  distilled 
and  packed — the  Dialogues  of  Plato,  Montaigne's 
Essays,  Boswell's  Johnson,  the  Essays  and  Journals 
of  Emerson — these  are  to  be  lived  with  and  re 
turned  to  and  made  the  companions  of  hours  and 
days  and  moods  as  various  as  those  in  which  they 
were  written.  You  cannot  discover  what  Emerson 
has  been  to  others  or  what  he  may  be  to  you  by  any 
cursory  turning  of  his  pages.  Still  less  can  you  "get 
him  up"  by  studying  any  summary  of  his  philosophi 
cal  system.  Philosophers  tell  us  indeed  that  his 
philosophical  system  is  hopelessly  antiquated,  and 
fancy  that  they  have  disposed  of  him.  But  Emer 
son  himself  remarked:  UI  need  hardly  say  to  anyone 
acquainted  with  my  thoughts  that  I  have  no  sys 
tem."  The  value  of  his  thoughts  depends  scarcely 

63 


64  AMERICANS 

more  upon  the  metaphysical  filaments  among  them 
than  the  value  of  a  string  of  alternating  beads  of 
gold  and  pearl  depends  upon  the  string.  The  figure 
has  a  momentary  illustrative  force  but  is  very  inade 
quate.  Emerson  lives,  still  speaks  pertinently  of 
our  current  affairs,  and  to-morrow  we  shall  still 
find  him  commenting  with  equal  pertinency  on  to 
morrow's  affairs.  To  know  him  is  not  mere  knowl 
edge.  It  is  an  experience;  for  he  is  a  dynamic  per 
sonality,  addressing  the  will,  the  emotions,  the 
imagination,  no  less  than  the  intellect.  His  value 
escapes  the  merely  intellectual  appraiser.  Analysis 
cannot  deal  properly  with  his  pungent  wit — it  must 
be  savored;  nor  with  the  impetus  that  he  gives  to 
the  will — it  must  be  felt;  nor  with  the  purgation 
and  serene  rapture  of  the  mind  towards  which  his 
noble  discipline  tends — this  rapture  must  be  at 
tained  as  a  state  of  grace  by  imitation  of  those  who 
have  attained  it,  by  lifelong  intercourse  with  men 
whose  tone  and  habit  of  life  is  noble. 


Since  we  are  to  consider  him  primarily  as  an 
unspent  force  in  our  own  times,  what  it  most  con 
cerns  us  to  enquire  about  him  is  what  he  can  do  for 
us.  If  we  approach  him  with  that  question,  we 
need  not  tarry  long  over  biographical  details,  inter 
esting  and  rewarding  as  they  may  be  to  the  student 
of  literary  history.  We  pretty  well  sum  up  his  ex- 


EMERSON  65 

ternal  career  when  we  say  that  he  was  a  New  Eng- 
lander  of  Boston,  where  he  was  born  in  1803,  and 
of  Concord,  where  he  died  in  1882,  after  a  studious 
life  of  irreproachable  purity,  dignity,  and  simplicity 
becoming  the  descendant  of  several  generations  of 
New  England  gentlemen  and  scholars.  His  formal 
education  he  received  at  the  Boston  Latin  School 
and  at  Harvard  College,  from  which  he  was  gradu 
ated  in  1821,  with  a  well-formed  bias  towards  an 
intellectual  life.  The  son  of  a  Unitarian  minister, 
he  inherited  an  ethical  impulse  which  directed  him 
to  the  Harvard  Divinity  School  in  1825-6.  In  1829 
he  was  appointed  pastor  of  the  Second  Unitarian 
Church  of  Boston.  He  was  married  in  the  same 
year  to  Ellen  Tucker,  who  died  two  years  later, 
leaving  him  a  sweet  and  unfading  memory  of  her 
fragile  loveliness.  After  he  had  served  his  parish 
acceptably  for  three  years,  he  felt  obliged  to  an 
nounce,  in  1832,  that  he  was  no  longer  able  to 
administer  the  sacrament  of  communion  in  the  gen 
eral  sense  of  his  congregation,  and  resigned  his 
charge.  In  December  of  that  year  he  visited  Eu 
rope  and  made  acquaintance  with  three  or  four  men 
whose  residence  in  Europe  constituted  for  him  the 
chief  reason  for  going  abroad:  Landor  in  Italy, 
Carlyle  at  Craigenputtock,  and  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth  in  England.  He  returned  to  America 
in  October,  1833,  and  in  the  following  year  settled 
permanently  in  Concord.  In  1835  he  married  his 
second  wife,  Lidian  Jackson.  For  three  or  four 


66  AMERICANS 

years  he  preached  with  some  regularity  in  various 
pulpits,  but  he  gradually  abandoned  the  church  for 
the  lyceum,  which  invited  him  as  far  west  as  Wis 
consin  and  Illinois.  He  made  a  second  visit  to 
England  in  1848.  For  the  most  part,  barring  his 
winter  lecturing  tours  and  an  occasional  excursion 
to  deliver  a  commencement  address  or  a  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  oration,  he  lived  placidly  in  Concord,  read 
ing,  meditating,  writing,  editing  the  short-lived 
transcendental  Dial,  looking  amusedly  askance  upon 
the  Brook  Farm  experiment,  and  walking  and  talk 
ing  with  his  famous  fellow-villagers,  the  Alcotts, 
the  Hawthornes,  Margaret  Fuller,  Ellery  Chan- 
ning,  and  Thoreau. 

What  ferment  of  radical  thought  went  on  be 
neath  the  decorous  exterior  of  that  quiet  scholar's 
life  we  know  with  remarkable  fulness  and  accuracy. 
From  early  boyhood  Emerson  kept  a  journal — a 
habit,  in  his  case,  denoting  a  mind  disposed  to  make 
unusual  exactions  of  the  "hypocritic  days."  At 
first,  he  is  much  occupied  with  what  he  has  read 
or  proposes  to  read;  but  presently  his  note-book 
becomes  a  kind  of  storehouse  for  mellowing  the 
fruits  of  his  daily  meditations,  and  an  experimental 
garden  for  planting  the  seeds  of  new  thoughts 
gathered  on  his  intellectual  adventures.  The  Jour 
nals,  now  published  in  twelve  volumes,  give  us 
an  invaluable  commentary  upon  the  long-familiar 
essays,  and  they  enrich  greatly  our  sense  of  the 
personality  behind  them.  Especially  they  illuminate 


EMERSON  67 

the  turning  point  in  Emerson's  life,  when  he  aban 
doned  the  pulpit  and  became  a  wholly  free  thinker 
and  speaker.  With  their  help,  one  perceives  that 
for  years  before  the  open  break,  the  inner  emanci 
pation  had  been  proceeding.  One  observes  the 
young  thinker  expanding  steadily  beyond  the  formu 
las  of  his  parish,  reaching  out  towards  the  life  of 
his  nation,  feeling  his  way  into  the  higher  spirit  of 
his  times,  daily  becoming  more  eager  to  exchange 
messages  and  compare  visions  with  the  leaders  of 
his  generation. 

It  is  a  vulgar  error  of  our  day  to  think  of  Emer 
son  and  his  friends  as  living  in  a  rude  and  mentally 
poverty-stricken  era.  In  his  formative  period,  say 
from  1820  to  1832,  society  around  the  Golden  Gate 
and  at  the  southern  end  of  Lake  Michigan  was 
indeed  in  a  somewhat  more  primitive  state  than  at 
present.  But  in  compensation,  such  civilized  society 
as  the  country  possessed  was  concentrated  in  a  much 
smaller  geographical  area.  To  reside  in  Boston  or 
New  York  was  not  then,  as  now,  to  live  on  the  rim 
but  at  the  centre  of  population,  within  reach  of  the 
molding  pressure  of  all  the  great  Americans  of  one's 
time.  The  "moment,"  furthermore,  was  peculiarly 
rich  in  the  presence  of  eminent  men  who  had  been 
shaped  by  the  Revolution,  and  in  the  presence  of 
men  who  were  to  become  eminent  in  the  movement 
which  led  to  the  Civil  War.  To  a  young  man  of 
Emerson's  quality,  the  period  of  the  Adamses,  Jef 
ferson,  Randolph,  and  Jackson,  the  period  of  Web- 


68  AMERICANS 

ster,  Clay,  Calhoun,  Everett,  and  Garrison,  was  not 
a  dull  period,  not  a  dead  interval,  but  a  most  stirring 
and  exciting  time  between  two  epoch-making  crises, 
with  the  thunder  of  a  political  Niagara  at  one's 
back,  and  the  roar  of  wild  rapids  ahead.  The  air 
was  full  of  promise  and  of  peril  and  of  conflicting 
measures  for  avoiding  the  one  and  fulfilling  the 
other. 

Politically-minded  men — the  Jacksons,  the  Clays, 
the  Calhouns — brought  to  the  problems  of  the  hour 
political  solutions.  But  the  more  sensitive  spirits 
among  the  younger  generation  in  New  England  had 
already  experienced  a  certain  reaction  against  the 
political  faith  and  enthusiasms  of  their  fathers.  Al 
ready  they  heard  the  ominous  creaking  of  demo 
cratic  machinery  under  the  manipulation  of  unskil 
ful  and  unscrupulous  hands.  To  them  it  began  to 
appear  that  the  next  great  improvement  in  the 
condition  of  society  must  depend  less  upon  the 
alteration  of  laws  and  institutions  than  upon  the 
intellectual  and  moral  regeneration  of  men.  The 
new  movement  was  genuinely  Puritan  by  its  inward 
ness,  by  its  earnest  passion  for  cleansing  the  inside 
of  the  cup,  and  by  its  protest  against  external 
powers  which  thwarted  or  retarded  the  efforts  of 
the  individual  soul  to  move  forward  and  upward  by 
light  from  within.  Looking  back  in  1844  over  the 
multifarious  projects  for  "the  salvation  of  the 
world"  unfolded  by  reformers  in  his  part  of  the 
country,  Emerson  remarks:  "There  was  in  all  the 


EMERSON  69 

practical  activities  of  New  England,  for  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century,  a  gradual  withdrawal  of  ten 
der  consciences  from  the  social  organization.  There 
is  observable  throughout,  the  contest  between  me 
chanical  and  spiritual  methods,  but  with  a  steady 
tendency  of  the  thoughtful  and  virtuous  to  a  deeper 
belief  and  reliance  on  spiritual  facts." 

Those  who  place  their  reliance  on  spiritual  facts 
have  always  been  thought  a  little  queer  and  rather 
dangerous  by  those  who  do  not.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  the  radical  protestantism  of  the  Puri 
tans,  which  Emerson  inherited,  has  contained  from 
the  time  of  Wycliff  an  anarchical  germ,  a  latent 
suspicion  of  church  and  state,  a  tendency  towards 
"coming  out,"  till  one  shall  stand  alone  in  utter 
freedom  and  count  for  one  and  nothing  more.  It 
is  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate  the  individualism 
which  characterized  the  movement  in  New  England. 
For  Emerson  above  all,  the  very  rapture  of  the  time 
rose  from  its  challenge  to  a  perfectly  independent, 
a  perfectly  fearless,  scrutiny  and  testing  of  received 
values  in  every  field — art,  politics,  morals,  religion. 

Emerson  was  preserved  from  the  fanaticism  of 
a  secession  from  "the  social  organization"  partly 
by  his  culture.  A  moral  reformation  which  under 
takes  to  investigate  the  bases  of  morals  will  develop 
and  transform  itself  into  an  intellectual  renascence 
as  soon  as  those  who  are  conducting  it  perceive  that 
everything  in  heaven  and  earth  has  a  bearing  on 
their  questions.  Emerson  discovered  early  that  the 


70  AMERICANS 

first  step  towards  thinking  greatly  and  freely  on 
moral  matters  is  to  consult  the  world's  accumulated 
wisdom.  Hasty  writers  speak  of  his  "jaunty"  atti 
tude  towards  the  past.  If  he  is  jaunty  about  the 
past,  it  is  because  he  is  very  familiar  with  it.  What 
impresses  the  thoughtful  student  of  his  journals  is 
his  steady  effort  to  hold  himself  and  his  contempo 
raries  under  the  searching  cross-lights  of  human 
experience.  He  reads  Plato,  Cicero,  Hafiz,  Con 
fucius,  Buddha,  Mahomet,  Dante,  Montaigne,  Mil 
ton,  Voltaire,  Kant,  Goethe,  Napoleon,  Coleridge, 
Carlyle,  because  that,  he  finds,  is  the  effective  way 
to  set  his  own  intelligence  free,  and  because  freedom, 
he  finds,  means  ability  to  move  at  ease  and  as  an 
equal  among  such  minds  as  these. 

But  Emerson  was  also  preserved  from  excessive 
individualism  by  a  passion  which,  properly  elevated 
and  directed,  may  be  a  young  man's  guardian  angel, 
the  passion  of  ambition.  "All  young  persons,"  he 
observes,  "thirst  for  a  real  existence  for  a  real  ob 
ject, — for  something  great  and  good  which  they 
shall  do  with  their  heart.  Meanwhile  they  all  pack 
gloves,  or  keep  books,  or  travel,  or  draw  indentures, 
or  cajole  old  women."  By  habitual  imaginative 
association  with  great  men,  he  had  assimilated  their 
thoughts  and  virtues,  and  had  accustomed  himself 
to  look  forward  with  an  almost  Miltonic  assurance 
to  playing  a  part  above  the  ordinary  in  the  life  of 
his  country.  At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  is  sketch 
ing  a  series  of  papers  on  the  improvement  of  the 


EMERSON  71 

nation.  He  thinks  the  demand  for  a  moral  educa 
tion  the  best  sign  of  the  times,  and  deems  the  explo 
ration  of  the  field  a  task  fit  for  a  new  Columbus. 
He  queries  whether  it  were  not  an  "heroic  adven 
ture"  for  him  to  "insist  on  being  a  popular  speaker." 
And  with  perceptible  elation  at  the  prospect  he  con 
cludes:  "To  address  a  great  nation  risen  from  the 
dust  and  sitting  in  absolute  judgment  on  the  merits 
of  men,  ready  to  hear  if  any  one  offers  good  counsel, 
may  rouse  the  ambition  and  exercise  the  judgment 
of  a  man." 


II 


There  is  some  disposition  at  present  to  look  upon 
Emerson's  ambition  as  extravagant  and  to  regard 
his  work  as  a  closed  chapter  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  America.  It  is  even  asserted  that  he  never  much 
affected  the  thinking  of  his  countrymen.  Says  a 
recent  writer,  "What  one  notices  about  him  chiefly 
is  his  lack  of  influence  upon  the  main  stream  of 
American  thought,  such  as  it  is.  He  had  admirers 
and  even  worshippers,  but  no  apprentices."  But 
this  judgment  will  not  stand  examination.  Emerson 
was  a  naturalist  with  a  fresh  vision  of  the  natural 
world:  he  had  Thoreau  for  an  apprentice,  and  be 
tween  them  they  established  relations  with  the  natu 
ral  world,  which  successive  naturalists  like  John 
Burroughs  and  John  Muir  have  maintained  and 
broadened  to  the  dimensions  of  a  national  tradition. 


72  AMERICANS 

Emerson  was  a  poet  with  a  fresh  vision  of  the 
poetic  field  in  America :  he  had  Whitman  for  a  dis 
ciple,  and  a  large  part  of  what  passes  with  us  as 
poetry  to-day,  whatever  is  indigenous  and  racy  of 
the  soil  and  native  character  and  ideals,  is  ultimately 
traceable  to  their  inspiration.  Emerson  is  our  great 
original  force  in  criticism;  he  left  the  imprint  of  his 
spirit  upon  Lowell,  who  said:  "There  is  no  man 
living  to  whom,  as  a  writer,  so  many  of  us  feel  and 
thankfully  acknowledge  so  great  an  indebtedness  for 
ennobling  impulses."  Whatever  is  finely  academic, 
high-bred,  and  distinguished  in  our  critical  literature 
to-day  has  felt  the  influence  of  Emerson  and  Lowell. 
"To  him,"  according  to  Lowell,  "more  than  to  all 
other  causes  together  did  the  young  martyrs  of  our 
Civil  War  owe  the  sustaining  strength  of  thought 
ful  heroism  that  is  so  touching  in  every  record  of 
their  lives."  By  his  aid  innumerable  preachers  and 
teachers  have  found  a  way  to  translate  the  message 
of  ancient  scriptures  into  the  language  of  modern 
men.  Every  American  who  pretends  to  know  any 
thing  whatever  of  the  American  classics  has  at  one 
time  or  other  read  the  Essays;  and  the  "idealism" 
which  was  once  thought  to  be  characteristic  of  the 
American  people  is  most  readily  formulated  in  a 
half  dozen  of  his  "familiar  quotations,"  which 
every  one  knows,  whether  he  has  read  a  line  of 
Emerson  or  not.  Directly  and  indirectly  Emerson 
probably  did  as  much  as  any  other  writer  in  our 
history  to  establish  what  we  mean  by  "a  good 


EMERSON  73 

American";  and  that,  in  the  long  run,  is  the  most 
important  sort  of  influence  that  can  be  exerted  by 
any  writer  in  any  country. 

That  his  influence  abroad  has  been  considerable 
may  be  briefly  suggested  by  the  reminder  that  he 
touched  deeply  such  various  men  as  Carlyle,  Mat 
thew  Arnold,  Nietzsche,  and  M.  Maeterlinck.  When 
Arnold  visited  America  in  1883,  he  lectured  on 
Emerson,  on  whom  thirty  years  earlier  he  had 
written  a  sonnet  of  ardent  admiration  and  homage. 
The  lecture,  the  fruit  of  his  ripest  critical  reflection, 
was  not  altogether  satisfactory  to  his  American 
audience.  It  impressed  them  as  quite  inadequately 
appreciative  of  their  chief  literary  luminary.  For 
Arnold  very  firmly  declared  that  Emerson  is  not  to 
be  ranked  with  the  great  poets,  nor  with  the  great 
writers  of  prose,  nor  with  the  great  makers  of  philo 
sophical  systems.  These  limitations  of  Emerson's 
power  are  commonly  quoted  as  if  detraction  were 
the  main  burden  of  Arnold's  message.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  they  are  preliminary  to  his  deliberate  and 
remarkable  declaration  that  in  his  judgment  Emer 
son's  essays  are  the  most  important  work  done  in 
prose  in  our  language  during  the  nineteenth  century. 
This  is  high  praise  from  an  exacting  critic  who  was 
little  given  to  the  use  of  superlatives  in  any  case, 
least  of  all  in  the  case  of  American  authors. 

For  what  merit  does  Emerson  deserve  this  pre 
eminent  place?  Because,  says  Arnold,  in  a  phrase 
full  of  significance,  because  "he  is  the  friend  and 


74  AMERICANS 

aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit"  Let 
us  unfold  a  little  the  implications  of  this  phrase  and 
make  its  application  more  precise.  Important  as 
Emerson  may  have  been  to  young  Englishmen  in  the 
first  half  of  the  last  century,  he  was  still  more  im 
portant  to  young  Americans.  Helpful  as  he  may 
become  to  European  minds,  he  will  always  remain 
peculiarly  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit  amid  an  environment  which,  as  is 
generally  thought,  tends  powerfully  to  confirm  on 
the  one  hand  the  hard  and  merely  practical  genius 
of  the  Yankee,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  narrow 
and  inflexible  righteousness  of  the  merely  traditional 
Puritan,  the  Puritan  who  feels  no  longer  the  urgency 
and  progressive  force  of  new  moral  life  within  him. 
To  the  posterity  of  Franklin  and  Edwards,  Emer 
son  is  the  destined  and  appropriate  counsellor  be 
cause  he  brings  them  undiminished  the  vital  force  of 
their  great  moral  traditions  while  at  the  same  time 
he  emancipates  them  from  the  "dead  hand,"  the 
cramping  and  lifeless  part  of  their  past.  To  chil 
dren  of  the  new  world,  Emerson  is  a  particularly 
inspiring  friend,  because  with  deep  indigenous  voice 
he  frees  them  from  unmanly  fear  of  their  elders, 
lifts  from  their  minds  the  overawing  prestige  of 
Europe,  liberates  the  powers  and  faith  of  the  indi 
vidual  man  and  makes  him  "at  home"  in  his  own 
time  and  place. 

A  great  part  of  our  lives,  as  we  all  recognize  in 
what  we  call  our  educational  period,   is   occupied 


EMERSON  75 

with  learning  how  to  do  and  to  be  what  others  have 
been  and  have  done  before  us.  We  come  abreast  of 
our  predecessors  by  imitating  them,  and  are  grateful 
to  the  masters  when  they  reveal  to  us  their  secrets, 
to  the  older  men  when  they  give  us  the  benefit  of 
their  experience.  But  presently  we  discover  that  the 
world  is  changing  around  us,  and  that  the  secrets  of 
the  masters  and  the  experience  of  our  elders  do  not 
wholly  suffice — much  though  they  aid  us — to  estab 
lish  us  effectively  in  our  younger  world.  We  dis 
cover  within  us  needs,  aspirations,  powers  of  which 
the  generation  that  educated  us  seems  unaware,  or 
towards  which  it  appears  to  be  indifferent,  unsympa 
thetic,  or  even  actively  hostile.  We  perceive  gradu 
ally  or  with  successive  shocks  of  surprise  that  many 
things  which  our  fathers  declared  were  true  and  sat 
isfactory  are  not  at  all  satisfactory,  are  by  no  means 
true,  for  us.  Then  it  dawns  upon  us,  perhaps  as  an 
exhilarating  opportunity,  perhaps  as  a  grave  and 
sobering  necessity,  that  in  a  little  while  we  ourselves 
shall  be  the  elders,  the  responsible  generation.  Our 
salvation  in  the  day  when  we  take  command  will 
depend,  we  are  constrained  to  believe,  upon  our 
disentanglement  from  the  lumber  of  heirlooms  and 
hereditary  devices,  and  upon  the  discovery  and  free 
wise  use  of  our  own  faculties.  The  vital  part  of 
education  begins  in  the  hour  when  consciousness  of 
self-dependence  breaks  upon  the  mind.  That  is  the 
hour  for  Emerson. 

He  appeals  to  unfolding  minds  because  he  is  pro- 


76  AMERICANS 

foundly  in  sympathy  with  the  modern  spirit.  By 
this  phrase  we  mean  primarily  the  disposition  to 
accept  nothing  on  authority,  but  to  bring  all  reports 
to  the  test  of  experience.  The  modern  spirit  is  first 
of  all  a  free  spirit  open  on  all  sides  to  the  influx  of 
truth.  But  freedom  is  not  its  only  characteristic. 
The  modern  spirit  is  marked  further  by  an  active 
curiosity  which  grows  by  what  it  feeds  upon,  and 
goes  ever  enquiring  for  fresher  and  sounder  infor 
mation,  not  content  till  it  has  the  best  information 
to  be  had  anywhere.  But  since  it  seeks  the  best,  it 
is,  by  necessity,  also  a  critical  spirit,  constantly  sift 
ing,  discriminating,  rejecting,  and  holding  fast  that 
which  is  good  only  till  that  which  is  better  is  within 
reach.  This  endless  quest,  when  it  becomes  central 
in  a  life,  requires  labor,  requires  pain,  requires  a 
measure  of  courage ;  and  so  the  modern  spirit,  with 
its  other  virtues,  is  an  heroic  spirit.  As  a  reward 
for  difficulties  gallantly  undertaken,  the  gods  bestow 
on  the  modern  spirit  a  kind  of  eternal  youth  with 
unfailing  powers  of  recuperation  and  growth.  This 
spirit — free,  actively  curious,  upward-striving,  criti 
cal,  courageous,  and  self-renewing — Emerson  richly 
possesses;  and  that  is  why  he  is  so  happily  qualified 
to  be  a  counsellor  of  youth  in  the  period  of  intel 
lectual  emancipation. 

There  are  many  prophets  abroad  in  the  land  to 
day,  offering  themselves  as  emancipators,  who  have 
only  very  partially  comprehended  their  task.  By 
the  incompleteness  of  their  message  they  bring  the 


EMERSON  77 

modern  spirit  itself  into  disrepute.  They  under 
stand  and  declare  that  the  modern  spirit  is  free  and 
curious.  They  have  failed  to  recognize  that  it  is 
also  critical  and  upward  striving.  When  the  well 
born  soul  discards  the  "old  clothes"  of  outworn 
custom  and  belief,  it  seeks  instinctively  for  fresh 
raiment;  but  these  Adamites  would  persuade  it  to 
rejoice  in  nakedness  and  seek  no  further.  They 
know  that  man  is  an  animal;  but  it  escapes  their 
notice  that  man  is  an  animal  constituted  and  des 
tined  by  his  nature  to  make  pilgrimages  in  search 
for  a  shrine,  and  to  worship,  till  he  finds  it,  the 
Unknown  God.  Because  they  understand  so  ill  the 
needs  and  cravings  of  man,  they  go  about  eagerly 
hurrying  him  from  a  predicament  into  a  disaster. 
They  conceive  that  they  have  properly  performed 
the  emancipative  function  when  they  have  cut  the 
young  generation  loose  from  the  old  moorings,  and 
set  it  adrift  at  the  mercy  of  wind  and  tide. 

It  is  these  partial  liberators  who  produce  in  our 
young  people  that  false  and  bewildering  sense  of 
illumination,  so  eloquently  described  by  John  Henry 
Newman.  Says  that  penetrating  analyst  of  modern 
libertinism:  "When  the  mind  throws  off  as  so  much 
prejudice  what  it  has  hitherto  held,  and,  as  if  wak 
ing  from  a  dream,  begins  to  realize  to  its  imagina 
tion  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  law  and  the 
transgression  of  law,  that  sin  is  a  phantom,  and 
punishment  a  bugbear,  that  it  is  free  to  sin,  free  to 
enjoy  the  world  and  the  flesh;  and  still  further, 


78  AMERICANS 

when  it  does  enjoy  them,  and  reflects  that  it  may 
think  and  hold  just  what  it  will,  that  'the  world  is 
all  before  it  where  to  choose,'  and  what  system  to 
build  up  as  its  own  private  persuasion;  when  this 
torrent  of  wilful  thoughts  rushes  over  and  inun 
dates  it,  who  will  deny  that  the  fruit  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge,  or  what  the  mind  takes  for  knowl 
edge,  has  made  it  one  of  the  gods,  with  a  sense  of 
expansion  and  elevation, — an  intoxication  in  reality, 
still,  so  far  as  the  subjective  state  of  the  mind  goes, 
an  illumination?" 

The  true  emancipator,  the  man  who  has  entered 
fully  into  the  modern  spirit,  is  always  a  reconstruc- 
tionist.  The  enlargement  of  mind  which  he  offers 
is  always,  to  modify  slightly  the  words  of  Newman, 
an  enlargement  not  of  tumult  and  intoxication  but 
of  clearer  vision  and  fruitful  peace.  In  our  Civil 
War  slaves  set  free  by  proclamation  flung  up  their 
caps  and  shouted  with  a  vague  joy.  But  shortly 
afterwards,  we  are  told,  many  of  them  returned  to 
their  old  masters  and  sought  reemployment  at  their 
former  tasks.  So  little  was  their  undirected  free 
dom  worth.  The  true  liberator  strikes  off  the  old 
shackles  but  immediately  he  suggests  new  service, 
a  fuller  use  of  our  powers.  He  cuts  us  loose  from 
the  old  moorings ;  but  then  he  comes  aboard  like  a 
good  pilot,  and  while  we  trim  our  sails,  he  takes 
the  wheel  and  lays  our  course  for  a  fresh  voyage. 
His  message  when  he  leaves  us  is  not,  "Henceforth 
be  masterless,"  but  "Bear  thou  henceforth  the  seep- 


EMERSON  79 

tre  of  thine  own  control  through  life  and  the  passion 
of  life." 


Ill 


Religious  emancipation  as  conducted  by  Emerson 
makes  a  man  not  less  but  more  religious.  It  frees 
the  restless  modern  soul  from  ancient  sectarian  fet 
ters,  from  ceremonial  that  has  become  empty,  and 
from  the  litter  of  meaningless  creeds.  But  straight 
way  it  reestablishes  the  soul  in  a  new  doctrine  of 
"continuous  revelation"  and  in  works  and  conduct 
proper  to  those  who  have  been  freshly  inspired. 
There  is  an  element  that  looks  like  mystical 
experience  underlying  this  fundamental  part  of 
Emerson's  religious  teaching.  But  since  mysticism 
constitutes  a  difficulty  and  an  obstacle  to  the  aver 
age  modern  mind,  let  us  reduce  the  irrational  or 
super-rational  element  as  far  as  possible.  Let  us 
explain  what  we  can. 

Emerson's  belief  in  continuous  revelation  is 
clearly  ascribable  in  large  measure  to  the  breadth 
of  his  spiritual  culture.  Throughout  his  life  he  was 
a  student  of  the  religions  of  the  world.  With  free 
and  open  mind  he  compared  the  teachings  of  Plato, 
Confucius,  Jesus,  Buddha,  Mahomet,  seeking  the 
spirit  beneath  the  letter  transmitted  by  each.  This 
comparison  did  not  bring  him  to  the  hasty  thinker's 
conclusion  that  the  Bible  of  Christians  is  an  unin 
spired  book,  but  rather  to  the  conclusion  that  all  the 


80  AMERICANS 

bibles  are  inspired  books.  The  farther  he  pressed 
his  studies  in  religion,  in  philosophy,  in  poetry,  the 
more  obvious  it  became  to  him  that  elevated  thought 
and  noble  emotion  are  not  the  exclusive  endowment 
of  any  special  period  or  person,  but  are  common  to 
the  highest  representatives  of  all  great  peoples  in 
all  the  great  ages. 

How  account  for  that  undeniable  and  really  very 
inspiriting  fact?  Emerson  explained  it  by  what 
might  be  called  the  law  of  the  conservation  of 
spiritual  energy.  The  mortal  forms,  momentarily 
fixed  in  the  shape  of  Plato  or  Confucius,  decay  and 
are  dispersed,  yet  their  elemental  force,  as  modern 
science  teaches  us,  is  not  destroyed,  but  resumed  and 
conserved  in  the  all-encompassing  energy  of  the  uni 
verse,  and  is  recreated  for  ever  and  ever  in  new 
shapes  of  men  and  things.  In  like  fashion,  as  it 
appeared  to  Emerson,  the  thought  and  feeling  of 
men,  since  thought  and  feeling  are  also  forms  of 
energy,  must  be  resumed  and  conserved  indestruc 
tibly  in  the  general  reservoir  of  moral  energy,  the 
"over-soul,"  from  which  they  flow  again  into  indi 
viduals,  generations,  races,  with  such  sustaining 
recurrence  as  the  vernal  sap  observes. 

The  vividness  of  his  belief  in  this  inflowing  power 
may  be  ascribed  to  certain  personal  experiences, 
emotional  and  exalting,  for  which  the  entire  disci 
pline  of  his  life  had  prepared  him.  From  his  youth 
up  he  had  conversed  in  his  reading  with  strong- 
souled  men,  with  the  saints,  heroes,  and  sages.  He 


EMERSON  81 

had  meditated  on  their  counsels  not  occasionally 
but  daily,  persistently,  for  hours  together,  till  the 
bounds  between  their  minds  and  his  disappeared, 
and  their  thoughts  actually  became  his  thoughts  and 
their  temper  his  temper.  It  is  a  discipline  which 
breaks  down  the  walls  of  personality  and  merges 
the  individual  with  the  over-soul.  By  books,  he 
writes  in  his  journal  in  1824  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  "my  memory  goes  back  to  a  past  immortality, 
and  I  almost  realize  the  perfection  of  a  spiritual 
intercourse  which  gains  all  the  good,  and  lacks  all 
the  inconvenience  and  disgust  of  close  society  of 
imperfect  beings.  We  are  then  likest  to  the  image 
of  God,  for  in  this  grateful  rapidity  of  thought  a 
thousand  years  become  one  day." 

A  mind  thus  stored  and  sensitized  will  respond 
now  and  then  to  an  apparently  slight  stimulus  with 
an  extraordinary  excitement  and  something  in  the 
nature  of  "vision"  and  "illumination."  The  young 
man  reads  in  quiet  solitude  one  of  the  more  poetical 
dialogues  of  Plato,  or  he  walks  in  flowering  fields 
communing  with  his  thoughts,  or  he  lifts  his  head 
from  his  sick-bed  at  sunrise  and  beholds  "the  spot 
less  orange  light  of  the  morning  streaming  up  from 
the  dark  hills  into  the  wide  universe."  Suddenly, 
to  him  unaccountably,  there  is  a  profound  stirring 
of  his  emotional  depths.  A  sense  of  sublimity  fills 
his  consciousness.  His  will  appears  to  him  godlike, 
invincible.  He  is  elate  with  benign  resolution.  In 
a  delighted  ecstasy  he  feels  streaming  through  all 


82  AMERICANS 

his  being  eternal  forces, — all  the  wisdom  and  all  the 
virtues  that  have  ever  been  in  the  world.  However 
we  may  attempt  to  explain,  or  to  explain  away,  his 
sensations,  he  himself  is  incontrovertibly  convinced 
that  he  has  been  visited  and  breathed  upon  by  a 
power-not-himself.  He  has  been  but  a  passive 
vessel  filled  to  the  brim  by  an  inrush  of  energy  from 
the  Over-soul,  from  the  circumfluent  seas  of  moral 
power. 

Such  inspiration,  Emerson  holds,  is  natural  to 
man.  It  is  probably  open  to  everyone  who  will 
subject  himself  to  the  requisite  preliminary  disci 
pline — who  will  live  steadily  with  such  thoughts  as 
Emerson  entertained.  Record  of  these  visitations 
one  may  find  here  and  there  in  the  Journals  in  such 
statements  as  this :  "I  am  surrounded  by  messengers 
of  God  who  send  me  credentials  day  by  day" — 
statements  which  an  intelligent  reader  may  accept 
as  substantially  true  and  essentially  verifiable  by  the 
method  just  indicated.  This  personal  and  direct 
relationship  which  he  cultivated  with  the  Over-soul 
had  a  two-fold  effect.  On  the  one  hand  it  quite 
indisposed  him  to  render  allegiance  to  intermediate 
powers.  Thus  he  declares  in  a  poem  of  1833,  "Self- 
Reliance"  : 

Henceforth,  please  God,  forever  I  forego 
The  yoke  of  men's  opinions.     I  will  be 
Light-hearted  as  a  bird,  and  live  with  God. 
I  find  Him  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart, 
I  hear  continually  His  voice  therein. 


EMERSON  83 

On  the  other  hand,  this  direct  relationship  with 
the  source  of  moral  power  made  him  joyfully  obe 
dient  to  the  impulses  of  what  he  at  various  times 
designated  as  the  heavenly  vision,  the  divine  neces 
sity,  or  the  overlord  of  his  soul.  A  certain  levity, 
almost  a  frivolity,  which  he  exhibits  now  and  then 
in  the  presence  of  creeds,  churches,  pious  organi 
zations,  is  actually  the  consequence  of  his  entire 
reverence  in  the  presence  of  every  unmistakable 
manifestation  of  spiritual  life.  Like  his  friend 
Carlyle,  he  feels  that  the  religious  edifices  of  the 
day  are  become  uninhabitable;  the  religious  spirit 
is  seeking  a  new  house.  "Religion,"  he  remarks, 
"does  not  seem  to  me  to  tend  now  to  a  cultus  as 
heretofore,  but  to  a  heroic  life.  We  find  difficulty 
in  conceiving  any  church,  any  liturgy,  any  rite  that 
would  be  genuine." 

This  sounds  like  a  radical  utterance.  It  is  radical 
with  the  root  and  branch  thoroughness  of  Emer 
son's  inherited  Puritanism,  a  vital  Puritanism 
urgent  with  fresh  power,  impatient  of  a  corrupted 
tradition  and  a  conformity  that  withholds  one  from 
the  living  truth.  The  tendency  of  the  traditional 
religious  culture  he  criticizes,  as  indifferent  to 
aesthetic  development,  narrowly  and  incompletely 
moral,  and  averse  from  the  wide  reaches  of  living 
truth  which  are  open  to  the  modern  mind  in  the 
domains  of  science.  He  holds  that  the  founder  of 
the  faith  in  which  most  of  his  countrymen  were  bred 
was  indeed  a  pure  beam  of  truth  whose  ethical  utter- 


84  AMERICANS 

ances  cannot  be  overprized,  yet  that  he  exhibited  a 
"very  exclusive  and  partial  development  of  the 
moral  element.  ...  A  perfect  man  should  exhibit 
all  the  traits  of  humanity,  and  should  expressly 
recognize  intellectual  nature.  [Italics  mine.]  Socra 
tes  I  call  a  complete,  universal  man." 

That  Emerson's  is  the  radicalism  of  a  conserva 
tive  bent  upon  holding  fast  that  which  is  good  is 
indicated  by  many  other  references  to  the  character 
and  teaching  of  Jesus,  to  whom  he  returns  again 
and  again  with  perceptions  quickened  and  sharp 
ened  by  his  secular  culture.  "How  strange,"  he 
exclaims,  "that  Jesus  should  stand  at  the  head  of 
history,  the  first  character  of  the  world  without 
doubt,  but  the  unlikeliest  of  all  men,  one  would  say, 
to  take  such  a  rank  in  the  world."  Approaching 
the  subject  from  a  quite  different  quarter,  he  says: 
"I  think  the  true  poetry  which  mankind  craves  is 
that  Moral  Poem  of  which  Jesus  chanted  to  the 
ages,  stanzas  so  celestial,  yet  only  stanzas."  And 
finally  from  still  another  angle:  "The  heart  of 
Christianity  is  the  heart  of  all  philosophy." 

IV 

Much  has  been  written  of  Emerson's  philosophi 
cal  indebtedness  to  Kant  and  his  German  followers, 
and  to  Coleridge  and  Carlyle  and  Madame  de  Stael, 
who  were  intermediaries  between  the  German  and 
the  New  England  transcendentalists.  It  is  not  in 


EMERSON  85 

my  power,  happily  it  is  not  much  to  our  purpose, 
to  enter  into  the  details  of  this  discussion.  Briefly 
speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  the  German  thinkers 
and  their  interpreters  by  their  combined  influence 
did  undoubtedly  strengthen  Emerson's  instinctive 
reaction  against  the  dry  and  incomplete  rationalism 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  against  the  Utili 
tarians  of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  to  his  nostrils 
brought  a  peculiarly  repugnant  odor  of  "profit  and 
loss."  But  Emerson  was  no  systematic  student  of 
metaphysics,  and  most  of  such  general  impulses  as 
he  was  capable  of  receiving  from  the  German 
system-makers,  he  had  perhaps  encountered  in  Plato 
and  Berkeley  and  the  seventeenth  century  divines 
before  he  had  much  cultivated  his  German.  He  ulti 
mately  made  his  way  through  Goethe,  but  he  never 
became  intimately  attached  to  him  or  even  quite 
reconciled  to  him,  finding  him  and  his  aesthetic 
friends  deficient  in  "moral  life." 

What  is  still  more  to  the  point,  the  vital  features 
of  Emerson's  philosophy  are  due  less  immediately 
to  his  reading  than  to  that  religious  illumination  of 
which  we  have  already  spoken.  He  arrived  at  the 
centre  of  his  beliefs  by  intuition.  From  the  me 
chanical  conception  of  the  universe  which  reduced 
Carlyle  almost  to  despair,  Emerson  emancipated 
himself,  or  rather  he  perfected  his  emancipation, 
by  a  critical  examination  of  his  own  experience. 
This  scrutiny  disclosed  a  real  world,  the  world  of 
things,  moved  by  physical  energies  in  accordance 


86  AMERICANS 

with  the  laws  of  things.  But  it  disclosed  also  an 
equally  real  world,  the  world  of  ideas,  moved  by 
moral  energies  in  accordance  with  the  laws,  perhaps 
less  clearly  understood,  of  ideas.  One  world  is 
associated  with  the  other  as  the  eye  is  associated 
with  seeing;  yet  seeing,  not  the  instrument  of  sight, 
is  the  sovereign  matter.  An  important  continua 
tion  of  the  Emersonian  influence  in  our  times,  Pro 
fessor  Irving  Babbitt,  takes  as  the  point  of  de 
parture  for  his  own  developments  these  lines  from 
Emerson's  Ode  to  W.  H.  Channing: 

There  are  two  laws  discrete, 

Not  reconciled, — 

Law  for  man,  and  law  for  thing; 

The  last  builds  town  and  fleet, 

But  it  runs  wild,  and  doth  the  man  unking. 

As  philosopher,  Emerson  conceives  it  his  chief 
business  to  explore  the  "law  for  man,"  to  formulate 
it,  and  to  obtain  recognition  of  it  as  the  supreme 
authority  in  human  relationships.  His  entire  effort 
aims  at  establishing  human  independence  and  a 
human  mastership.  Man  liberates  himself  and  ex 
changes  servitude  for  mastery  in  proportion  as  he 
obeys  the  "law  for  man"  and  learns  to  make  the 
"law  for  things"  serve  him.  In  thus  firmly  insisting 
upon  a  radical  distinction  between  the  two  parallel 
planes  of  experience,  Emerson  is  in  accord  with  the 
wisdom  of  the  ages  and  at  variance  with  the  folly 
/  of  the  times,  which  tends  to  obliterate  distinctions 


EMERSON  87 

and,  surrendering  to  a  physical  fatalism,  to  accept 
the  law  for  things  as  also  the  law  for  man.  Those 
who  still  contend  for  the  identity  of  the  two  laws 
like  to  speak  of  their  view  as  "realistic."  It  is  a 
word  to  conjure  with.  Emerson's  view  will  prevail 
against  theirs  only  when  it  is  finally  established  as 
more  realistic  than  theirs,  as  more  accurately  and 
adequately  descriptive  of  the  facts  of  nature,  the 
experience  of  men. 

It  is  important  to  note  that  what  Emerson  con 
tends  for  as  the  realistic  view  is  the  "twoness"  of 
the  universe.  He  does  not  oppose  a  physical  mon 
ism  with  a  spiritual  monism,  but  with  a  fairly  clean- 
cut  dualism.  It  is  a  man  asserting  the  equal  realness 
but  radical  dissimilarity  of  things  and  ideas  who 
remarks  in  his  Journal,  "Realist  seems  the  true 
name  for  the  movement  party  among  our  Scholars 
here.  I  at  least  endeavor  to  make  the  exchange 
evermore  of  a  reality  for  a  name."  When  the 
"solid  men"  of  his  day  complain  that  his  way  of 
thinking  neglects  the  fundamental  facts,  he  replies 
that  their  way  of  thinking  neglects  the  hypaethral 
facts,  but  that  his  way  of  thinking  takes  due  cogni 
zance  of  both:  "Turnpike  is  one  thing  and  blue  sky 
another."  "The  poet  complains  that  the  solid  men 
leave  out  the  sky."  This  is  the  sunny  mockery  of 
one  who  was  both  a  poet  and  a  solid  man.  Emerson 
wove  a  net  for  casting  in  fathomless  seas  and 
brought  home  his  catches  by  ways  unknown  to  the 
fishermen;  but  this  did  not  prevent  his  raising  good 


88  AMERICANS 

apples  in  his  Concord  orchard  and  taking  the  cus 
tomary  road  to  market. 

His  philosophical  emphasis  is,  however,  of  course 
upon  the  order  of  facts  most  likely  to  be  ignored  by 
the  "solid  men,"  and  because  of  his  emphasis  upon 
this  order  of  facts  we  speak  of  him  as  an  idealist 
and  as  a  great  fountain  of  American  idealism. 
What  idealism  meant  to  him  is  expressed  in  his 
Journal  in  words  which  Moliere's  cook  might  have 
understood:  "We  are  idealists  whenever  we  prefer 
an  idea  to  a  sensation.  .  .  .  The  physical  sciences 
are  only  well  studied  when  they  are  explored  for 
ideas.  .  .  .  The  book  is  always  dear  which  has 
made  us  for  moments  idealists.  That  which  can 
dissipate  this  block  of  earth  into  shining  ether  is 
genius.  I  have  no  hatred  to  the  round  earth  and 
its  grey  mountains.  I  see  well  enough  the  sandhill 
opposite  my  window.  Their  phenomenal  being  I  no 
more  dispute  than  I  do  my  own.  .  .  .  Religion 
makes  us  idealists.  Any  strong  passion  does.  The 
best,  the  happiest  moments  of  life,  are  these  deli 
cious  awakenings  of  the  higher  powers  and  the 
reverential  withdrawing  of  nature  before  its  God. 
.  .  .  We  are  all  aiming  to  be  idealists,  and  covet 
the  society  of  those  who  make  us  so,  as  the  sweet 
singer,  the  orator,  the  ideal  painter." 


It  is  commonly  said  that  Emerson's  interest  in 
morals  is  his  inheritance  from  the  Puritans.    In  this 


EMERSON  89 

connection  it  is  interesting  to  find  him  in  the  Journal 
associating  himself  consciously  with  the  loftiest 
Puritan  of  the  seventeenth  century,  John  Milton,  of 
whom  he  writes:  "Milton  describes  himself  to 
Diodati  as  enamored  of  moral  perfection.  He  did 
not  love  it  more  than  I."  Here  indeed  is  a  visible 
link  in  what  we  have  grown  accustomed  to  call  the 
Puritan  tradition.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  were 
Emerson  and  Milton  more  in  love  with  moral  per 
fection  than  Spenser,  or  was  Spenser  more  in  love 
with  it  than  Dante,  or  Dante  than  Augustine,  or 
Augustine  than  the  Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius,  or 
the  Emperor  than  Socrates?  There  is  a  great  com 
munity  of  minds  enamored  of  moral  perfection.  It 
is  no  novel  passion  originating  in  New  England  or 
among  the  English  Puritans.  How  explain  the 
antiquity  of  the  tradition?  Dante,  following  Aris 
totle,  explains  it  by  declaring  that  "all  things,  by  an 
intuition  of  their  own  nature,  seek  perfection." 
Emerson,  then,  rediscovered  what  Aristotle  had  ob 
served  :  that  the  impulse  to  self-perfection  is  a  tend 
ency  in  the  constitution  of  man. 

In  America,  the  most  important  predecessor  of 
Emerson  in  this  rediscovery  was  a  free-thinking 
man  of  the  world,  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with 
strait-laced  and  stiff-necked  performers  of  barren 
rites  and  observances.  I  refer  to  the  greatest 
liberalizing  force  in  eighteenth  century  America, 
Benjamin  Franklin.  Was  he  a  Puritan?  No  one 
thinks  of  him  as  such;  yet  in  truth  he  represents 


90  AMERICANS 

the  normal  reaction  of  a  radical  protestantism,  of 
a  living  Puritanism,  to  an  "Age  of  Enlightenment." 
By  the  courage  of  his  moral  realism  he  prepares  the 
way  for  Emerson.  He,  too,  begins  his  independent 
studies  after  a  revolt  against  ecclesiastical  authority, 
as  narrow  and  unrealistic.  The  course  of  his  eman 
cipation  is  set  forth  in  the  Autobiography,  where 
he  relates  his  disgust  at  a  sermon  on  the  great  text 
in  Philippians :  "Finally,  brethren,  whatsoever  things 
are  true,  honest,  just,  pure,  lovely,  or  of  good  re 
port,  if  there  be  any  virtue,  or  any  praise,  think  on 
these  things."  In  expounding  this  text  the  clergy 
man  confined  himself  to  enjoining  scrupulous  Sab 
bath  observances,  respect  to  ministers,  etc.,  etc. 
"These  might,"  says  Franklin,  "be  all  good  things; 
but,  as  they  were  not  the  kind  of  good  things  that 
I  expected  from  that  text,  I  despaired  of  ever  meet 
ing  with  them  from  any  other,  was  disgusted,  and 
attended  his  preaching  no  more." 

Franklin  attended  that  preaching  no  more.  But 
note  what  follows,  apparently  as  the  consequence 
of  his  break  with  the  church:  "It  was  about  this 
time  that  I  conceived  the  bold  and  arduous  project 
of  arriving  at  moral  perfection.  I  wished  to  live 
without  committing  any  fault  at  any  time,  and  to 
conquer  all  that  either  natural  inclination,  custom 
or  company  might  lead  me  into."  Everyone  will 
recall  how  Franklin  drew  up  his  table  of  thirteen 
moral  virtues,  and  how  he  studied  the  means  for 
putting  them  into  effect.  But  for  us  the  most  signifi- 


EMERSON  91 

cant  feature  of  this  enterprise  and  of  his  proposed 
Art  of  Virtue  was  the  realistic  spirit  in  which  they 
were  conceived,  the  bold  attempt  to  ground  the  vir 
tues  upon  experience  rather  than  upon  authority, 
the  assertion  of  the  doctrine  "that  vicious  actions 
are  not  hurtful  because  they  are  forbidden,  but  for 
bidden  because  they  are  hurtful,  the  nature  of  man 
alone  considered" 

Emerson  as  moralist  takes  up  the  work  which 
Frnaklin's  political  duties  prevented  him  from 
carrying  out.  He  repeats  Franklin's  revolt  in  the 
name  of  sincerity,  truth,  actuality.  "Whoso  would 
be  a  man,"  he  declares  in  "Self-Reliance,"  "must  be 
a  nonconformist.  He  who  would  gather  immortal 
palms  must  not  be  hindered  by  the  name  of  good 
ness,  but  must  explore  if  it  be  goodness."  He  does 
not  take  up  the  virtues  so  methodically  and  exhaust 
ively  as  Franklin  does.  That  is  mainly  because  he 
conceives  morality  to  lie  in  a  right  condition  and 
attitude  of  the  whole  self,  from  which  particular 
acts  will  result  with  a  kind  of  instinctive  and  inevi 
table  Tightness.  "The  less  a  man  thinks  or  knows 
about  his  virtues,"  he  says  in  "Spiritual  Laws,"  "the 
better  we  like  him."  He  concerns  himself  less  with 
particular  acts  than  many  less  exacting  moralists, 
because  he  demands  as  the  evidence  of  goodness 
that  one's  entire  life  shall  be  "an  alms,  a  battle,  a 
conquest,  a  medicine."  The  grand  business  of  the 
moral  explorer,  as  he  understands  it,  is  to  push  past 
conduct  to  the  springs  of  conduct,  to  blaze  a  path' 


92  AMERICANS 

behind  the  virtues   to  that  general  moral  power 
which  is  the  source  of  all  the  virtues. 

There  is  a  familiar  saying  of  Emerson's  which 
would  epitomize,  if  it  were  understood,  most  of 
what  is  important  and  dynamic  in  all  the  Emer 
sonian  messages.  Taken  from  its  context  in  the 
essay  on  "Civilization,"  it  has  perhaps  been  more 
widely  quoted  than  anything  else  that  he  uttered. 
Unfortunately  one  never  hears  it  quoted  with  any 
sense  of  what  it  means  in  the  thought  of  Emerson, 
where  its  position  is  absolutely  central.  The  saying 
is  this:  "Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star."  If  one  asks 
a  man  from  whose  lips  it  has  glibly  slipped  what 
"Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star"  means,  he  replies, 
"Aim  high,"  a  useful  enough  maxim  of  archery,  but 
as  a  moral  precept  dreadfully  trite  and  unproduc 
tive.  What  Emerson  really  means  is :  Put  yourself 
in  connection  with  irresistible  power.  In  the  physi 
cal  world,  let  water  turn  your  mill,  let  steam  pull 
your  cars,  let  the  atmospheric  electricity  carry  your 
words  around  the  world.  "That  is  the  way  we  are 
strong,  by  borrowing  the  might  of  the  elements." 
Likewise  in  the  moral  world,  go  where  the  gods 
are  going,  take  the  direction  of  all  good  men  and 
let  them  bear  you  along,  strike  into  the  current  of 
the  great  human  traditions,  discover  the  law  of  your 
higher  nature  and  act  with  it.  Presently  you  will 
notice  that  you  are  no  longer  fuming  at  obstacles 
and  fretting  at  your  personal  impotence,  but  are 
borne  forward  like  one  destined. 


EMERSON  93 

At  just  this  point  many  stern  critics  have  cried 
out  against  Emerson  as  a  moral  teacher,  and  have 
charged  him  with  counselling  an  optimistic  passivity. 
Emerson  bids  us  go  with  the  current.  The  stern 
critic  snatches  at  a  figure  and  comes  away  with  an 
error.  Have  not  all  the  orthodox  doctors  taught 
that  the  good  man  goes  against  the  current?  Such 
misapprehension  is  the  penalty  for  being  a  poet — 
for  not  sticking  faithfully  to  the  technical  jargon. 
Without  resorting  to  that  medium,  however,  it 
should  be  possible  to  clear  Emerson  of  the  charge 
of  counselling  a  foolish  optimism,  an  indiscreet  or 
base  passivity.  It  should,  at  any  rate,  be  possible  to 
clear  him  in  the  eyes  of  any  one  whose  morals  have, 
like  his,  a  religious  basis — for  example,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  sad  and  strenuous  author  of  that  great  line : 
"In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace — In  his  will  is 
our  peace."  The  point  is,  that  Emerson  does  not 
urge  us  to  confide  in  all  currents,  to  yield  to  all 
tendencies.  It  is  only  after  we  have  arrived  by  high 
thinking  at  a  proud  definition  of  man  that  we  are 
to  take  for  our  motto:  "I  dare  do  all  that  may 
become  a  man."  It  is  only  after  we  have  discovered 
by  severe  inquisition  the  law  of  our  higher  self  that 
we  are  to  trust  our  instincts  and  follow  our  nature. 
We  are  to  be  confident  and  passive.  Yes :  when  we 
are  doing  the  will  of  God. 

What  made  Emerson's  teaching  take  hold  of  his 
contemporaries,  what  should  commend  it  to  us  to 
day,  is  just  its  unfailingly  positive  character,  the 


94  AMERICANS 

way  it  supplements  by  the  restoration  of  classical 
virtues  our  Christian  gospel  of  long-suffering.  There 
is  a  welcome  in  it  for  life,  even  before  the  quality 
is  disclosed:  "Virtue  is  uneducated  power."  There 
is  a  place  in  it  for  manly  resistance:  "Be  as  benefi 
cent  as  the  sun  or  the  sea,  but  if  your  rights  as  a 
rational  being  are  trenched  on,  die  on  the  first  inch 
of  your  territory."  There  is  the  strong  man's  relish 
for  difficulty  and  hostility:  "We  must  have  antago 
nisms  in  the  tough  world  for  all  the  variety  of  our 
spiritual  faculties  or  they  will  not  be  born."  There 
is  precept  for  use  of  the  spur:  "He  that  rides  his 
hobby  gently  must  always  give  way  to  him  that  rides 
his  hobby  hard."  There  is  warrant  for  choosing 
one's  path:  It  is  a  man's  "essential  virtue  to  carry 
out  into  action  his  own  dearest  ends,  to  dare  to  do 
what  he  believes  and  loves.  If  he  thinks  a  sonnet 
the  flower  and  result  of  the  world,  let  him  sacrifice 
all  to  the  sonnet."  Even  in  his  definition  of  friend 
ship,  Emerson  drives  at  action:  "He  is  my  friend 
who  makes  me  do  what  I  can."  It  is  obvious  that 
he  restores  ambition,  an  aspect  of  magnanimity,  to 
its  proper  place  in  the  formation  of  the  manly  char 
acter,  ambition  to  bring  one's  life  to  its  fullest  fruit. 
This  accounts  for  his  extraordinary  emphasis 
upon  the  virtue  of  courage:  "It  may  be  safely 
trusted — God  will  not  have  His  work  made  mani 
fest  by  cowards."  Read  from  that  cue,  and  pres 
ently  you  fancy  that  all  forms  of  virtue  appeared 
to  him  as  aspects  and  phases  of  courage.  He  has 


EMERSON  95 

praise  for  the  courage  of  nonconformity,  the  cour 
age  of  inconsistency,  the  courage  of  veracity,  the 
courage  to  mix  with  men,  the  courage  to  be  alone, 
the  courage  to  treat  all  men  as  equals — but  at  this 
thought  he  remembers  his  proud  conception  of  man, 
his  imagination  kindles,  and  he  cries :  "Shall  I  not 
treat  all  men  as  gods?"  and,  elsewhere,  "God  de 
fend  me  from  ever  looking  at  a  man  as  an  animal." 
It  sounds  like  extravagance.  It  may  turn  out  to  be 
a  maxim  of  the  higher  prudence.  Treating  men 
like  worms  has  been  tried — without  particularly 
gratifying  results.  Why  not  explore  the  conse 
quences  of  assuming  that  men  have  a  nobler  des 
tiny?  If  you  are  educating  a  prince,  all  the  classical 
manuals  enjoin  it  upon  you  to  treat  him  like  a  prince. 
Why  should  not  this  hold  of  uncrowned  sovereigns 
in  general?  Courage  to  do  these  extraordinary 
things  Emerson  learned  of  his  Aunt  Mary  Moody 
Emerson,  who  taught  him  in  his  boyhood  to  face 
whatever  he  feared.  Such  courage  he  praised  in  his 
last  word  on  Carlyle,  "He  never  feared  the  face  of 
man." 

Moralists  present  to  us  in  general  three  distin 
guishable  sanctions  for  the  virtuous  life,  or  as  Emer 
son  would  have  preferred  to  call  it,  the  heroic 
life.  They  may  commend  conduct  as  conducive  to 
happiness  in  the  future  world — the  theological  sanc 
tion.  They  may  commend  it  as  conducive  to  pleas 
ure  or  happiness  or  convenience  on  earth — the 
utilitarian  sanction.  Or  finally  they  may  commend 


96  AMERICANS 

it  as  in  accordance  with  the  proper  nature  of  man — 
the  humanistic  sanction.  This  is  the  position  taken 
by  Marcus  Aurelius  in  a  passage  extolled  by  Mat 
thew  Arnold.  Which  of  these  is  Emerson's  sanc 
tion?  In  the  essay  on  "Compensation,"  which  he 
thought  one  of  his  prime  contributions,  he  argues 
that  divine  justice  executes  itself  in  this  world  in 
accordance  with  inevitable  laws.  It  is  essentially 
the  argument  of  Franklin;  one  is  still  concerned  with 
reward  and  punishment.  But  the  general  tenor  of 
Emerson's  life  and  teaching  rises  above  this  level. 
Habitually  he  speaks  in  the  spirit  of  the  Roman 
Emperor,  so  deeply  appealing  to  the  well-born  soul: 
UA  third  in  a  manner  does  not  even  know  what  he 
has  done,  but  he  is  like  a  vine  which  has  produced 
grapes,  and  seeks  for  nothing  more  after  it  has 
once  produced  its  proper  fruit.  As  a  horse  when 
he  has  run,  a  dog  when  he  has  caught  the  game, 
a  bee  when  it  has  made  its  honey,  so  a  man  when  he 
has  done  a  good  act,  does  not  call  out  for  others 
to  come  and  see,  but  he  goes  on  to  another  act, 
as  a  vine  goes  on  to  produce  again  the  grapes  in 


VI 


Though  Emerson  had  thought  much  about  the 
relation  of  the  individual  to  society  and  to  the  state, 
he  was  not  in  any  practical  diurnal  sense  of  the  word 


EMERSON  97 

a  politically-minded  man.  Politics  is  the  art  and 
science  of  governing  masses.  The  art  and  science 
which  appealed  to  his  ambition  is  that  which  enables 
the  individual  to  govern  himself.  So  far  as  he 
was  concerned,  he  felt  little  need  of  external  govern 
ment.  Indeed,  like  many  of  the  saints  and  sages, 
conscious  that  he  himself  was  actuated  by  the  purest 
internal  motives,  he  looked  with  wary  and  somewhat 
jealous  eye  upon  the  existence  of  an  external  con 
trolling  power  in  the  state  which  might  be  actuated 
by  motives  far  less  pure  and  in  the  exercise  of  its 
constituted  activity,  warp  him  from  the  bias  of  his 
soul.  In  this  respect,  he  was  distinctly  a  child  of 
the  time-spirit  which  followed  the  Revolution  and 
preceded  the  Civil  War,  that  period  when  the  first 
dire  need  of  a  powerful  union  had  passed  and  the 
second  dire  need  of  it  had  not  yet  been  fully  mani 
fested.  He  could  sympathize  with  his  friend 
Thoreau,  who  withdrew  from  the  social  organiza 
tion  to  the  extent  of  refusing  to  pay  his  taxes.  But 
his  Yankee  common  sense  preserved  him  from  imi 
tating  this  fanaticism.  He  perceived,  as  every  in 
telligent  lover  of  freedom  does,  that  a  decent  con 
formity  is  the  very  secret  of  freedom. 

He  loved  freedom  too  much  to  coquet  with 
anarchy.  The  imaginative  masters  of  his  political 
speculations,  Plato,  More,  Milton,  Burke,  Montes 
quieu,  had  confirmed  him,  furthermore,  in  the  con 
viction  that  "politics  rest  on  necessary  foundations, 
and  cannot  be  treated  with  levity."  The  foundation 


98  AMERICANS 

of  government,  he  recognized,  is  in  the  constitution 
of  man:  "Every  human  society  wants  to  be  officered 
by  the  best  class,  who  shall  be  masters  instructed 
in  all  the  great  arts  of  life;  shall  be  wise,  temperate, 
brave,  public  men,  adorned  with  dignity  and  accom 
plishments."  He  perceived  that  it  is  no  true 
function  of  the  philosopher  to  bring  into  contempt 
even  imperfect  instruments  of  order  and  liberty  till 
better  instruments  are  at  hand. 

Like  most  Americans,  however,  he  had  pretty 
much  lost  respect  for  government  by  an  hereditary 
aristocracy.  He  acknowledges  the  virtues  of  the 
hereditary  principle  but  with  a  touch  of  disdain: 
it  has  "secured  permanence  of  families,  firmness  of 
customs,  a  certain  external  culture  and  good  taste; 
gratified  the  ear  with  historic  names."  Its  defect 
was  its  failure  to  make  the  laws  of  nature  serve  it. 
Nature  did  not  cooperate  with  the  system:  "the 
heroic  father  did  not  surely  have  heroic  sons,  and 
still  less  heroic  grandsons;  wealth  and  ease  cor 
rupted  the  race." 

He  goes  a  long  way  towards  accepting  the  prin 
ciples  of  the  French  Revolution.  His  respect  for 
efficient  power  makes  him  betray,  in  Representa 
tive  Men,  a  great  admiration  for  Napoleon  Bona 
parte,  qualified  by  grave  reservations.  He  desires, 
with  Carlyle,  to  bring  forward  a  natural  aristocracy, 
an  aristocracy  of  talent.  He  would  like  to  believe 
that  democracy  is  the  means  for  recruiting  that 
talent,  for  organizing  the  superior  class  by  which 


EMERSON  99 

society  needs  to  be  officered.  But  his  study  of  the 
tyrannies  of  an  "efficient  state"  administered  by 
Napoleonic  officers  to  whose  talents  a  career  was 
opened,  has  awakened  in  him  as  it  never  did  in 
Carlyle,  a  deep  suspicion  of  the  "natural  method," 
has  put  him  on  a  criticism  of  democracy,  which  is 
the  most  valuable  element  in  his  political  writing. 
Might  with  right,  Emerson  never  confused  as 
Carlyle  confused  them — hopelessly;  as  democracies 
may  at  any  time,  under  bad  leadership,  confuse 
them.  "Our  institutions,"  he  declares  in  his  "Poli 
tics,"  "though  in  coincidence  with  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  have  not  any  exemption  from  the  practical  de 
fects  which  have  discredited  other  forms.  Every 
actual  State  is  corrupt.  Good  men  must  not  obey 
the  laws  too  well."  His  patriotism  was  free,  emanci 
pated.  In  the  year  when  he  became  of  age,  1824, 
he  wrote  in  his  Journal:  "I  confess  I  am  a  little  cyni 
cal  on  some  topics,  and  when  a  whole  nation  is 
roaring  Patriotism  at  the  top  of  its  voice,  I  am 
fain  to  explore  the  cleanness  of  its  hands  and  the 
purity  of  its  heart."  In  his  Journal  of  1833-5  he 
wrote  "the  life  of  this  world  has  a  limited  worth 
in  my  eyes,  and  really  is  not  worth  such  a  price  as 
the  toleration  of  slavery."  He  cried  out  at  the 
land-grabbing  of  the  Mexican  War.  He  spoke  re 
peatedly  between  1837  and  1861  in  behalf  of  free 
speech,  in  behalf  of  emancipating  the  slaves,  and 
in  favor  of  violating  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law. 
Against  the  howling  of  mobs,  as  Mr.  Woodberry 


100  AMERICANS 

shows  in  an  admirable  summary  of  his  participa 
tion  in  the  Anti-slavery  movement,  "his  civic  courage 
was  flawless."  He  interrupted  his  lecture  on  Hero 
ism  in  1838  to  praise  the  brave  Lovejoy  "who  gave 
his  breast  to  the  bullets  of  a  mob,  for  the  rights 
of  free  speech  and  opinion,  and  died  when  it  was 
better  not  to  live."  He  received  John  Brown  in 
Concord,  and  when  two  years  later  the  law  doomed 
him  to  die,  he  declared  publicly  in  Boston  that  the 
new  saint  would  "make  the  gallows  glorious  like 
the  cross." 

Efficient  nature,  the  source  of  political  power, 
herself  requires  to  be  checked.  Where  is  the  check 
to  be  found?  "The  wise  man  is  to  settle  it  im 
movably  in  his  mind,  that  he  only  is  fit  to  decide 
on  his  best  action;  he  only  is  fit  to  praise  it;  his 
verdict  is  praise  enough,  and  as  to  society,  'their 
hiss  is  thine  applause'"  (Journals,  1833-5).  The 
contention  of  parties  cannot  be  trusted  to  guard  the 
interests  of  truth.  Emerson  has  no  naive  respect 
for  numbers.  He  has  looked  with  disillusioned  eye 
upon  the  wisdom  of  majorities.  He  confides  to 
his  Journal,  for  example,  that  if  Jackson  is 
elected,  "we  shall  all  feel  dirty."  He  says 
that  if  he  were  unduly  in  love  with  life,  he 
would  attend  a  Jackson  caucus,  and  "I  doubt  not 
the  unmixed  malignity,  the  withering  selfishness,  the 
impudent  vulgarity,  that  mark  those  meetings  would 
speedily  cure  me  of  my  appetite  for  longevity."  Yet 
despite  this  bitterness,  the  Jackson  party  was,  as  he 


EMERSON  101 

himself  recognized,  that  towards  which  his  own  prin 
ciples  and  sympathies — in  theory,  broadly  popular 
— should  have  inclined  him.  Speaking  for  publica 
tion,  in  his  essay  on  "Politics,"  he  reveals,  with  less 
asperity,  the  fact  that  he  is  not  captivated  by  either 
party.  The  paragraph  that  follows  might  have  been 
written  by  a  disappointed  independent  of  1920: 

"The  vice  of  our  leading  parties  in  this  country 
*  •;.  *  is  that  they  do  not  plant  themselves  on  the 
deep  and  necessary  grounds  to  which  they  are  re 
spectively  entitled.  ...  Of  the  two  great  par 
ties  which,  at  this  hour,  almost  share  the  nation 
between  them,  I  should  say  that  the  one  has  the  best 
cause,  and  the  other  contains  the  best  men.  The 
philosopher,  the  poet,  or  the  religious  man  will,  of 
course,  wish  to  cast  his  vote  with  the  democrat,  for 
free-trade,  for  wide  suffrage,  for  the  abolition  of 
legal  cruelties  in  the  penal  code,  and  for  facilitat 
ing  in  every  manner  the  access  of  the  young  and  the 
poor  to  the  sources  of  wealth  and  power.  [My 
italics] .  But  he  can  rarely  accept  the  persons  whom 
the  so-called  popular  party  proposes  to  him  as  repre 
sentatives  of  these  liberalities.  They  have  not  at 
heart  the  ends  which  give  to  the  name  of  democracy 
what  hope  and  virtue  are  in  it." 

Possibly  Emerson's  concern  for  the  "unwashed 
masses"  forged  a  bit  ahead  of  his  sympathies  as  a 
man  of  flesh  and  blood.  Theoretically,  he  was  not 
afraid  of  dirt.  Before  Whitman  bade  us  shun  "deli- 
catesse,"  Emerson  had  perceived  that  the  effective 


102  AMERICANS 

democrat  must  not  be  a  "high  priest  of  the  kid-glove 
persuasion."  Writing  in  his  Journal  at  the  age  of 
thirty-two,  he  says :  "I  would  not  have  a  man  dainty 
in  his  conduct.  Let  him  not  be  afraid  of  being 
besmirched  by  being  advertised  in  the  newspapers, 
or  by  going  into  Athenaeums  or  town-meetings  or 
by  making  speeches  in  public.  Let  his  chapel  of 
private  thoughts  be  so  holy  that  it  shall  perfume 
and  separate  him  unto  the  Lord,  though  he  lay  in 
a  kennel." 

It  ought  to  be  possible  to  feel  "inwardly  perfumed 
and  separated  unto  the  Lord"  without  either  show 
ing  or  feeling  that  Brahminical  spirit  of  exclusive- 
ness  which  men  like  Holmes  and  Lowell  exhibited, 
and  of  which  they  were  obviously  proud.  Emerson 
was  quite  earnestly  opposed  to  the  celebrated 
Brahminism  of  Boston  and  Cambridge.  As  Mr. 
Brownell  has  finely  said:  "A  constituent  of  his 
refinement  was  an  instinctive  antipathy  to  ideas  of 
dominance,  dictation,  patronage,  caste,  and  material 
superiority  whose  essential  grossness  repelled  him 
and  whose  ultimate  origin  in  contemptuousness — 
probably  the  one  moral  state  except  cravenness  that 
chiefly  he  deemed  contemptible — was  plain  enough 
to  his  penetration."  Henry  Adams  suggests,  indeed 
with  a  touch  of  characteristic  humor,  that  Emerson, 
from  the  spiritual  altitude  of  Concord,  probably 
looked  down  on  the  Brahmins  themselves,  looked 
down,  for  instance,  on  the  Adamses,  as  worldlings. 

Now  there  is  interesting  evidence  in  the  Journals 


EMERSON  103 

\ 

that  Emerson  might  have  looked  down  on  Henry 
Adams  but  from  a  point  of  view  remote  from  that 
indicated  by  Adams : 

"I  do  not  forgive  in  any  man  this  forlorn  pride, 
as  if  he  were  an  Ultimus  Romanorum.  I  am  more 
American  in  my  feelings.  This  country  is  full  of 
people  whose  fathers  were  judges,  generals,  and 
bank  presidents,  and  if  all  their  boys  should  give 
themselves  airs  thereon  and  rest  henceforth  on  the 
oars  of  their  fathers'  merit,  we  should  be  a  sad 
hungry  generation.  Moreover,  I  esteem  it  my  best 
birthright  that  our  people  are  not  crippled  by  family 
and  official  pride,  that  the  best  broadcloth  coat  in 
the  country  is  put  off  to  put  on  a  blue  frock,  that 
the  best  man  in  town  may  steer  his  plough-tail  or 
may  drive  a  milk-cart.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
work  in  our  men,  and  a  false  pride  has  not  yet  made 
them  idle  or  ashamed.  Moreover,  I  am  more 
philosophical  than  to  love  this  retrospect.  I  believe 
in  the  being  God,  not  in  the  God  that  has  been.  I 
work;  my  fathers  may  have  wrought  or  rested. 
What  have  I  to  do  with  them,  or  with  the  Fellatahs, 
or  the  great  Khan!  I  know  a  worthy  man  who 
walks  the  streets  with  silent  indignation  as  a  last 
of  his  race,  quite  contemptuously  eyeing  the  passing 
multitude." 

Emerson  goes  farther  than  that  in  welcoming 
the  "new  man,"  the  power  without  known  ante 
cedents.  In  a  notable  passage  of  his  Journal  for 
1845,  one  sees  him,  as  it  were,  shaking  off  the  dust 


104  AMERICANS 

of  the  house  of  his  fathers,  breaking  out  of  the 
old  New  England,  in  order  to  enter  America,  to 
participate  in  that  national  spirit  which  we  know 
today  must  learn  to  enfold  and  assimilate  men  of 
all  races : 

"I  hate  the  narrowness  of  the  Native  American 
Party.  It  is  the  dog  in  the  manger.  It  is  precisely 
opposite  to  all  the  dictates  of  love  and  magnanim 
ity;  and  therefore,  of  course,  opposite  to  true  wis 
dom.  .  .  Man  is  the  most  composite  of  all  crea 
tures  .  .  .  Well,  as  in  the  old  burning  of  the 
Temple  at  Corinth,  by  the  melting  and  intermixture 
of  silver  and  gold  and  other  metals  a  new  compound 
more  precious  than  any,  called  Corinthian  brass, 
was  formed;  so  in  this  continent — asylum  of  all 
nations — the  energy  of  Irish,  Germans,  Swedes, 
Poles,  and  Cossacks,  and  all  the  European  tribes — 
of  the  Africans,  and  of  the  Polynesians — will  con 
struct  a  new  race,  a  new  religion,  a  new  state,  a  new 
literature,  which  will  be  as  vigorous  as  the  new 
Europe  which  came  out  of  the  smelting-pot  of  the 
Dark  Ages,  or  that  which  earlier  emerged  from  the 
Pelasgic  and  Etruscan  barbarism.  La  Nature  aime 
les  crolsements" 

No  man  who  honestly  and  earnestly  contemplates 
the  making  of  a  nation  out  of  such  heterogeneous 
elements  as  Emerson  here  enumerates,  no  man  who 
truly  cherishes  the  potentialities  of  human  power, 
wherever  they  lie,  is  disposed  to  assign  to  political 
agencies  an  undue  part  in  shaping  the  product  of 


EMERSON  105 

the  melting  pot.  Emerson  did  not.  If  we  were 
to  sum  up  his  attitude  towards  the  state  in  a  single 
sentence,  it  would  take  some  such  form  as  this :  The 
State  exists  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  individuals  in 
it:  and  its  stability  and  its  welfare  depend  primarily 
on  the  effort  of  each  individual  in  it.  All  concrete 
advance  towards  social  regeneration,  he  believed, 
is  accomplished  by  minorities — by  minorities  of 
one  !  In  a  country  with  a  strong  inclination  towards 
beginning  all  efforts  for  moral  reformation  by  the 
election  of  a  president  and  a  secretary,  he  pro 
poses  this  modest  method:  "Count  from  yourself 
in  order  the  persons  that  have  near  relation  to  you 
up  to  ten  or  fifteen,  and  see  if  you  can  consider 
your  whole  relation  to  each  without  squirming. 
That  will  be  something."  Commenting,  in  "Life 
and  Letters  in  New  England,"  on  a  socialistic 
scheme  for  imposing  economic  salvation  on  the 
world  from  No.  200  Broadway,  he  surmises  that 
it  would  be  better  to  say:  "Let  us  be  lovers  and  ser 
vants  of  that  which  is  just,  and  straighway  every 
man  becomes  a  center  of  a  holy  and  beneficent  re 
public,  which  he  sees  to  include  all  men  in  its  law, 
like  that  of  Plato  and  Christ."  Let  the  great  state 
arch  above  us,  but  let  it  beware  of  pressing  too  near, 
lest  it  crush  more  natural  and  vital  powers — the 
power  of  the  individual  over  himself;  the  power  of 
the  family,  the  neighborhood,  the  town-meeting,  the 
local  enterprise;  the  "atmospheric"  power  of  cul 
ture,  the  gradual  and  beneficent  pressure  of  a 


106  AMERICANS 

natural  society  steadily  growing  stronger  by  the 
diffusion  of  science  and  humane  learning. 

The  Emersonian  doctrine  of  democratic  individ 
ualism  has  its  defects.  In  these  days  it  appears 
rather  homely  and  old-fashioned.  Yet  it  has  merits 
towards  which  one  occasionally  turns  with  nostalgic 
yearnings,  merits  which  may  yet  restore  it  to  some 
of  its  former  favor.  After  many  a  popular  election, 
is  it  not  still  the  chief  available  consolation  to  go 
quietly  home  and  close  the  door  and  reflect  that  the 
wise  man  "occupies  all  the  space  between  God  and 
the  mob?"  And  in  spite  of  all  the  allurement  of 
centralized  power,  with  its  promise  of  prompt  and 
"nation-wide"  progress  in  the  sense  of  the  men  at 
Washington,  shall  we  not  find  in  the  years  to  come 
that  the  preservation  of  individuality  in  the  private 
citizen  and  of  pride  and  initiative  in  the  "parish,"  the 
province,  and  the  separate  states,  is  as  vital  to  the 
health  of  the  far-flung  nation  as  the  use  of  hands 
and  feet? 


VII 


It  has  ordinarily  been  assumed  and  asserted  that 
Emerson  was  very  little  developed  on  the  aesthetic 
side.  This  assumption  is  intimately  associated  with 
two  other  popular  errors,  which,  in  the  light  of  our 
examination,  we  may  now  dismiss.  We  may  first 
dismiss  the  popular  error  which  holds  that  the  center 


,   EMERSON  107 

of  his  being  was  ethical;  for  we  have  seen  that  the 
center  of  his  being  was  religious.  We  may  dismiss, 
also,  the  popular  error  of  regarding  him  as  a  repre 
sentative  of  Puritan  decadence;  for  we  have  seen 
that  he  represents  rather  a  renascence  and  fresh 
flowering  of  the  ancient  passion  for  self-perfection. 
We  think  rightly  of  Emerson  when  we  think  of  him 
as  a  humanist  bent  upon  liberating  and  developing 
not  some  but  all  of  the  properly  human  powers.  He 
builds  his  many-chambered  house  of  life  around  a 
private  oratory,  because  like  every  successfully  ex 
ploring  humanist,  he  finds  a  private  oratory  at  the 
center  of  his  heart.  But  this  innermost  shrine  of 
religious  inspiration  is  emphatically  not  a  Calvin- 
istic  chapel,  hostile  to  the  arts.  It  is  a  retreat 
friendly  to  all  the  Muses  that  ever  haunted  Siloa's 
brook  or  Heliconian  springs. 

Emerson  believed,  indeed,  like  his  great  prede 
cessor  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that  the  pulsing 
spirit  which  "voluntary  moves  harmonious  num 
bers"  prefers  before  all  temples  "the  upright  heart 
and  pure."  But  no  one  who  has  approached  that 
inner  shrine  will  ever  picture  him  as  summoning  the 
Sacred  Nine  about  him  in  order  to  give  them  a  les 
son  in  conduct.  No  one  understands  Emerson  who 
fails  to  perceive  that  he  trusts  his  inspiration,  like 
a  Pythian  prophet,  like  a  celebrant  of  Dionysian 
mysteries.  "If  I  am  the  devil's  child,"  he  defiantly 
retorted  in  his  youth  to  one  who  had  urged  him  to 
beware  of  his  instincts,  "I  will  live  from  the  devil." 


108  AMERICANS 

Well  assured  that  he  was  not  the  devil's  child,  he 
opened  communication  with  his  sources  of  power, 
resolute  to  receive  and  utter  whatever  they  sent, 
though  it  might  sound  like  blasphemy,  though  it 
might  whiff  received  ethics  down  the  wind.  Through 
a  great  part  of  his  prose  and  verse,  there  is  the  pe 
culiar  beat  and  throb  which  marks  work  conceived 
in  creative  heat,  under  the  sway  of  the  "divine 
madness."  Some  of  the  friends  who  came  closest 
to  him  testified  to  receiving  from  him  not  counsel 
but  a  sheer  access  of  vital  energy  exhilarating  to  the 
verge  of  intoxication.  It  is  above  all  a  generative 
and  fecundating  impulse  that  he  seeks  for  himself. 
It  is  this  above  all  that  he  desires  to  impart  to 
others. 

We  all  tend  to  slip  at  times  into  colorless  and 
meaningless  routine,  into  lives  of  grey  commonplace 
and  insignificance.  Emerson  seems  to  have  appre 
hended  this  as  a  peril  to  which  our  democratic  so 
ciety  is  peculiarly  exposed.  He  cultivates  the  means 
of  combating  it.  He  cultivates,  for  example,  the 
color  of  Oriental  poetry.  He  follows  Hafiz,  this 
Unitarian  in  revolt  against  the  tedium  and  dead 
level  of  the  cold  New  England  virtue,  and  cries: 
"Let  us  be  crowned  with  roses,  let  us  drink  wine,  and 
break  up  the  tiresome  old  roof  of  heaven  into  new 
forms."  He  writes  an  essay  on  "Inspiration,"  which 
is  a  study  under  ten  headings  of  the  technique  of 
exaltation,  of  ecstasy.  He  chants  an  ode  to  Bacchus, 
calling  for 


EMERSON  109 

Wine  of  wine, 

Blood  of  the  world, 

Form  of  forms,  and  mould  of  statures, 

That  I  intoxicated 

And  by  the  draught  assimilated, 

May  float  at  pleasure  through  all  natures. 

Under  the  heading  "Morals"  in  his  discourse  on 
"Poetry  and  Imagination,"  he  comes  to  the  conclu 
sion,  entirely  characteristic  of  him,  that  "Power, 
new  power,  is  the  good  which  the  soul  seeks."  On 
this  theme  Emerson  writes  occasionally  with  a  reck 
lessness  not  often  associated  with  the  "Victorian" 
period  in  America.  For  power,  he  intimates  in 
"Mithridates,"  a  poet  may  perhaps  well  pay  with 
his  soul: 

Too  long  shut  in  strait  and  few, 
Thinly  dieted  on  dew, 
I  will  use  the  world,  and  sift  it, 
To  a  thousand  humors  shift  it, 
As  you  spin  a  cherry. 
O  doleful  ghosts,  and  goblins  merry! 
O  all  you  virtues,  methods,  mights, 
Means,  appliances,  delights, 
Reputed  wrongs  and  braggart  rights, 
Smug  routine,  and  things  allowed, 
Minorities,  things  under  cloud! 
Hither!  take  me,  use  me,  fill  me, 
Vein  and  artery,  though  ye  kill  me ! 

As  a  priest  of  the  "being  God,  not  the  God  that 
has  been,"  Emerson  finds  that  even  the  greatest  of 
the  old  poets  do  not  wholly  content  him.  As  a 


110  AMERICANS 

believer  in  the  doctrine  of  continuous  revelation,  he 
demands  a  new  revelation.  "In  a  cotillon,"  he  de 
clares  in  "Poetry  and  Imagination,"  "some  persons 
dance  and  others  await  their  turn  when  the  music 
and  the  figure  come  to  them.  In  the  dance  of  God 
there  is  not  one  of  the  chorus  but  can  and  will  begin 
to  spin,  monumental  as  he  now  looks,  whenever  the 
music  and  figure  reach  his  place  and  duty.  O  celes 
tial  Bacchus!  drive  them  mad — this  multitude  of 
vagabonds,  hungry  for  eloquence,  hungry  for  poetry, 
starving  for  symbols,  perishing  for  want  of  elec 
tricity  to  vitalize  this  too  much  pasture,  and  in  the 
long  delay  indemnifying  themselves  with  the  false 
wine  of  alcohol,  of  politics,  or  of  money." 

Emerson  knew  pretty  well  what  he  wanted  in  the 
way  of  a  new  poet.  He  was  not  in  the  least  inter 
ested  in  the  production  of  more  "parlor  or  piano 
verse."  He  wanted  such  utterance  as  could  come 
only  from  a  great  and  noble  soul  immersed  in  the 
realities  and  filled  with  the  spirit  of  the  modern 
world.  His  poet  must  be  radical,  revolutionary, 
formative:  "Bring  us  the  bards  who  shall  sing  all 
our  old  ideas  out  of  our  heads,  and  new  ones  in; 
men-making  poets  .  .  .  poetry  which  finds  its 
rhymes  and  cadences  in  the  rhymes  and  iterations 
of  nature,  and  is  the  gift  to  men  of  new  images  and 
symbols,  each  the  ensign  and  oracle  of  an  age;  that 
shall  assimilate  men  to  it,  mould  itself  into  religions 
and  mythologies,  and  impart  its  quality  to  cen 
turies."  In  his  essay  on  "The  Poet,"  he  regrets  that 


EMERSON  111 

"we  have  yet  had  no  genius  in  America,  with  tyran 
nous  eye,  which  knew  the  value  of  our  incomparable 
materials,  and  saw,  in  the  barbarism  and  material 
ism  of  the  times,  another  carnival  of  the  same  gods 
whose  picture  it  so  much  admires  in  Homer;  then 
in  the  middle  age;  then  in  Calvinism  .  ,  v  Our 
log-rolling,  our  stumps  and  their  politics,  our  fish 
eries,  our  Negroes,  and  Indians,  our  boats,  and  our 
repudiations,  the  wrath  of  rogues,  and  the  pusil 
lanimity  of  honest  men,  the  northern  trade,  the 
southern  planting,  the  western  clearing,  Oregon  and 
Texas,  are  yet  unsung.  Yet  America  is  a  poem 
in  our  eyes;  its  ample  geography  dazzles  the  imagi 
nation,  and  it  will  not  wait  long  for  metres." 
Clearly,  Emerson  was  calling  for  a  singer  in  many 
important  respects  resembling  Whitman ;  and  Whit 
man  answered. 

It  is  not  yet  adequately  recognized  to  what  extent 
Emerson  anticipated  not  only  Whitman  but  also  the 
poets  of  the  present  hour.  He  anticipates  their  de 
sire  to  strike  up  for  the  new  world  a  new  tune.  He 
thinks  that  we  leaned  too  much  in  the  past  upon 
England.  Our  literature  has  become  lifelessly  tradi 
tional  through  uninspired  imitation.  We  require 
some  sort  of  break  and  shock  to  liberate  our  own 
native  talents.  In  an  extremely  interesting  passage 
of  the  third  volume  of  the  Journals,  he  records  the 
surmise  that  salvation  may  come  from  that  very 
element  which,  in  politics,  he  thought  of  as  consti 
tuting  the  party  of  unkempt  pioneers,  barbarians, 


112  AMERICANS 

slave-holders,  and  corruptionists :  "I  suppose  the 
evil  may  be  cured  by  this  rank  rabble  party,  the 
Jacksonism  of  the  country,  heedless  of  English  and 
of  all  literature — a  stone  cut  out  of  the  ground  with 
out  hands — they  may  root  out  the  hollow  dilet 
tantism  of  our  cultivation  in  the  coarsest  way,  and 
the  new  born  may  begin  again  to  frame  their  own 
world  with  greater  advantage." 

As  literary  critic,  Emerson  has,  with  only  an  oc 
casional  trace  of  reluctance,  the  courage  of  his  free 
religion,  his  philosophy,  his  politics.  His  thought 
in  these  matters  underlies  and  supports  his  Poetics 
and  his  Rhetoric.  Mystic,  symbolist,  and  demo 
crat,  he  is  constrained  to  declare  that  there  is  no 
vulgar  life  save  that  of  which  the  poetry  has  not  yet 
been  written.  He  urges  us  bravely  to  paint  the 
prospect  from  our  doors,  wherever  they  open.  He 
asserts  the  possibility  of  all  subjects:  "A  dog 
drawn  by  a  master,  or  a  litter  of  pigs,  satisfies,  and 
is  a  reality  not  less  than  the  frescoes  of  Angelo." 
He  detests  a  bookish  and  fossilized  phrase  and  dic 
tion:  "He  only  is  a  good  writer  who  keeps  one  eye 
on  his  page,  and  with  the  other  sweeps  over  things, 
so  that  every  sentence  brings  in  a  new  contribution 
of  observation."  He  has  meditated  deeply  on  im 
age,  rhyme,  and  rhythm;  and  has  discovered  the 
literary  value  of  colloquial  cadence,  the  picturesque 
language  of  children,  the  scoff  and  violence  of  the 
"yeoman,"  the  pungency  of  natural  persons  express 
ing  their  mother-wit.  His  essays  contain  more  great 


EMERSON  113 

"free  verse"  than  any  one  has  written  since.  Poems, 
such  as  "Hamatreya,"  "Woodnotes,"  "Monadnoc," 
and  "Musketaquid,"  prove  his  possession  of  senses 
tinglingly  responsive  to  the  touches  of  native  color, 
scent,  and  sound;  show  a  poetical  nature  that  has 
struck  root  and  has  been  richly  nourished  "in  haunts 
which  others  scorned."  As  for  his  general  theory 
of  art,  in  his  more  sanguine  and  exalted  moments 
he  goes  beyond  our  most  radical  leaders  in  his  pas 
sion  for  reconciling  art  with  nature  and  restoring 
it  to  "all  the  people,"  so  that  the  ultimate  phase  of 
artistic  development  would  be  an  habitual  happy 
improvisation. 

That  aspiration,  as  Emerson  would  have  been  the 
first  to  admit,  was  ideal,  was  Utopian.  It  could  be 
realized  only  in  a  profoundly  regenerated  and  en 
riched  society.  In  this  world  as  it  is  at  present,  he 
recognized  that  great  poetry,  for  example,  must  be 
the  result  of  special  culture  and  austere  discipline. 
It  must  therefore  be  submitted  for  judgment  to  the 
cultivated  and  the  disciplined.  He  has  no  immediate 
intention  of  accepting  the  standards  of  the  mob. 
Our  radical  anti-critical  friends  would  indeed  dis 
pose  of  him  as  "academic."  For  he  comforts  him 
self,  in  the  absence  of  a  national  Academy,  with  this 
reflection,  in  the  second  volume  of  the  Journals: 
"Consider  the  permanence  of  the  best  opinion:  the 
certainty  with  which  a  good  book  acquires  fame, 
though  a  bad  book  succeeds  better  at  first.  Consider 
the  natural  academy  which  the  best  heads  of  the 


114  AMERICANS 

time  constitute,  and  which  'tis  pleasant  to  see,  act 
almost  as  harmoniously  and  efficiently,  as  if  they 
were  organized  and  acted  by  vote." 

For  a  writer  who  is  often  classified  nowadays  as 
a  "mere  moralist,"  Emerson  liberated  an  extraordi 
nary  number  of  ideas  about  both  the  major  and  the 
minor  problems  of  the  literary  art.  You  may  say, 
if  you  like,  that  his  literary  scrupulousness  is  but  an 
aspect  of  his  moral  rectitude;  but  any  other  writer 
of  his  exacting  artistic  conscience  would  be  saluted 
by  all  the  anti-Puritans  as  a  "lover  of  beauty,"  a 
"martyr  of  style."  In  1831,  long  before  Flaubert 
or  Pater  had  announced  it,  he  committed  to  his 
Journal  the  doctrine  of  the  "unique  word:"  "No 
man  can  write  well  who  thinks  there  is  any  choice 
of  words  for  him.  The  laws  of  composition  are  as 
strict  as  those  of  sculpture  and  architecture.  There 
is  always  one  line  that  ought  to  be  drawn,  or  one 
proportion  that  should  be  kept,  and  every  other  line 
or  proportion  is  wrong,  and  so  far  wrong  as  it 
deviates  from  this.  So  in  writing,  there  is  always 
a  right  word,  and  every  other  than  that  is  wrong. 
There  is  no  beauty  in  words  except  in  their  colloca 
tion.  The  effect  of  a  fanciful  word  misplaced,  is 
like  that  of  a  horn  of  exquisite  polish  growing  on 
a  human  head." 

Economy,  Emerson  regards  as  the  poet's  chastity: 
"Let  the  poet,  of  all  men,  stop  with  his  inspiration. 
The  inexorable  rule  in  the  muses'  court,  either  in 
spiration  or  silence,  compels  the  bard  to  report  only 


EMERSON  115 

his  supreme  moments.  It  teaches  the  enormous 
force  of  a  few  words  and  in  proportion  to  the  in 
spiration  checks  loquacity."  Despite  his  desire  for 
fresh  beginnings  in  America,  he  finds  it  necessary 
to  turn  back  to  the  old  English  writers,  "not  because 
they  are  old,  but  simply  because  they  wrote  well. 
If  we  write  as  well,  we  may  deviate  from  them  and 
our  deviations  shall  be  classical."  Every  one,  it  is 
to  be  hoped,  remembers  the  little  poem  called  "The 
Test,"  in  which  Emerson  challenges  his  reader  to 
find  the  "five  lines"  in  his  verses  which  outlasted 
five  hundred.  It  is  a  virtue  in  him,  which  our  pres 
ent  loquacity  should  some  day  make  esteemed,  that 
he  so  often  anticipates  the  winnowing  of  time,  as 
in  the  firm  Landorian  carving  of  the  Concord  Hymn 
with  its  cumulative  solemnity,  reaching  its  climax 
in  the  breathless  pause  of  the  flawless  final  stanza, 
before  the  ultimate  foot: 

Spirit,  that  made  those  heroes  dare 
To  die,  and  leave  their  children  free, 
Bid  Time  and  Nature  gently  spare 
The  shaft  we  raise  to  them  and  thee. 

The  popular  taste  in  poetry,  as  is  proved  by  many 
of  the  great  reputations,  is  a  little  waterish.  Emer 
son  served  "wine  of  wine."  He  has  been  underrated 
as  a  poet  because  he  did  not  understand,  or  would 
not  practice,  dilution.  One  suspects  that  he  might 
be  reinstated  if  some  student  of  Japanese  verse 
would  display  in  a  wide-margined  volume  some  fifty 


116  AMERICANS 

or  a  hundred  of  his  "images,"  selected  here  and 
there  from  his  baskets  of  cut  gems,  for  example: 

I  am  a  willow  of  the  wilderness 
Loving  the  wind  that  bent  me. 

Or  possibly  the  reviver  of  Emerson  should  remind 
the  Chicago  School  of  these  lines: 

Bulkeley,  Hunt,  Willard,  Hosmer,  Meriam,  Flint, 
Possessed  the  land  which  rendered  to  their  toil 
Hay,  corn,  roots,  hemp,  flax,  apples,  wool  and  wood. 

Critics  have  sufficiently  harped  upon  certain  de 
fects  in  the  prose  style  of  Emerson:  the  apparent 
lack  of  firm  design  and  evolution  in  the  larger  divi 
sions  of  his  discourse;  the  difficult  transitions,  the 
imperfect  coherence,  within  the  paragraphs.  It  is 
perhaps  worth  observing  that  some  of  these  faults 
are  closely  connected  with  his  characteristic  virtues, 
and  are  truly  due  to  the  excess  of  these  virtues. 
Emerson  is  characteristically  rich  and  economical. 
He  is  so  rich  that  he  can  put  into  a  sentence  as  much 
as  another  would  put  into  a  paragraph,  and  as  much 
into  a  paragraph  as  another  would  put  into  his  en 
tire  discourse.  He  is  so  economical  of  space,  so 
bent  on  filling  every  inch  with  solid  matter,  that  he 
deliberately  prunes  away  what  is  merely  explanatory 
and  transitional.  If  one  compares  passages  in  the 
Journals  with  parallel  passages  in  the  essays,  one 
remarks  at  first  with  surprise  that  the  superiority 


EMERSON  117 

on  the  side  of  fluency  and  texture  is  frequently  with 
the  Journals.  The  superiority  of  the  essays  is  in 
condensation  and  intensity. 

It  should  be  observed,  furthermore,  that  in  the 
prose  which  Emerson  himself  published  the  degree 
of  fluency  and  stylistic  coherence  varies  greatly  with 
the  subject.  The  moral  essays,  such  as  "Self- 
Reliance"  and  "Compensation,"  are  written  more  or 
less  in  the  manner  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  or  the 
Essays  of  Bacon.  They  are  built  of  distinct  in 
junctions,  maxims,  and  fragments  of  wisdom,  twenty 
or  thirty  of  them  to  a  paragraph.  "Solid  bags  of 
duckshot,"  Carlyle  called  these  paragraphs,  and 
urged  Emerson  to  fuse  them  into  a  solid  luminous 
bar.  They  are  close  packed  enough,  in  all  con 
science,  without  fusion.  There  is  stuff  enough  for 
a  morning's  meditation  in  any  half-dozen  of  the 
hundreds  of  maxims  which  make  up  the  essay 
on  Self-Reliance.  But  no  ordinary  mind  can  read 
easily  page  after  page  of  epitomized  moral  experi 
ence:  "Be  it  how  it  will,  do  right  now.  Always  scorn 
appearances,  and  you  always  may.  The  force  of 
character  is  cumulative.  All  the  foregone  days 
of  virtue  work  their  health  into  this."  Before  such 
matter  can  be  made  to  flow,  it  must  be  diluted. 
Read  in  youth  and  for  the  first  time,  a  page  of  such 
writing  seems  pebbly  and  difficult.  But  at  each 
re-reading  one  discovers  more  pebbles  that  are  inter 
estingly  translucent,  opalescent,  with  a  fire  at  the 
heart  of  them.  Returning  later  in  life,  after  per- 


118  AMERICANS 

haps  the  twentieth  reading,  one  may  discover  that 
the  pattern  in  the  page  comes  out,  that  the  gaps  are 
bridged  by  one's  own  experience,  that  each  sentence 
is  illustrated  by  one's  own  verification  of  it,  and  that 
somehow  this  swift  "saltation"  from  epitome  to 
epitome  of  moral  wisdom  makes  all  other  moral 
writing  seem  thin  and  flat. 

But  Emerson  has  many  other  prose  manners,  to 
which  the  stock  criticisms  and  the  traditional  jests 
are  not  at  all  applicable.  Turn,  for  example,  to  his 
"Thoreau,"  a  biographical  portrait  executed  in  the 
firm  objective  manner  of  Suetonious  yet  with  the 
gusto  of  Plutarch — a  superbly  vital  piece  of  char 
acterization,  unsurpassed  if  not  unequalled  by  any 
thing  of  like  scope  in  American  literature.  Or  con 
sider  the  flow  of  his  reminiscences  of  Brook  Farm 
and  his  bland  comment  on  Fourierism  in  Life  and 
Letters  in  New  England;  it  is  beautiful  writing, 
urbane,  luminous,  exquisitely  ironical.  Or  for  still 
another  vein,  turn  to  the  pages  in  English  Traits 
where  he  describes  meeting  Thomas  Carlyle,  with 
something  of  the  Scotch  master's  graphic  force : 

On  my  return,  I  came  from  Glasgow  to  Dum 
fries,  and  being  intent  on  delivering  a  letter  which 
I  had  brought  from  Rome,  inquired  for  Craigenput- 
tock.  It  was  a  farm  in  Nithdale,  in  the  parish  of 
Dumscore,  sixteen  miles  distant.  No  public  coach 
passed  near  it,  so  I  took  a  private  carriage  from  the 
inn.  I  found  the  house  amid  heathery  hills,  where 
the  lonely  scholar  nourished  his  mighty  heart.  Car- 


EMERSON  119 

lyle  was  a  man  from  his  youth,  an  author  who  did 
not  need  to  hide  from  his  readers,  and  as  absolute  a 
man  of  the  world,  unknown  and  exiled  on  that  hill- 
farm  as  if  holding  on  his  own  terms  what  is  best  in 
London.  He  was  tall  and  gaunt,  with  a  cliff-like 
brow,  self  possessed  and  holding  his  extraordinary 
powers  of  conversation  in  easy  command;  clinging 
to  his  northern  accent  with  evident  relish;  full  of 
lively  anecdote,  and  with  a  streaming  humor,  which 
floated  everything  he  looked  upon. 

If  Emerson  writes  comparatively  little  in  the 
descriptive  and  narrative  veins,  it  is  neither  from 
impotence  nor  by  chance  but  on  consideration.  "Do 
you  see,"  he  asks  himself,  "what  we  preserve  of  his 
tory?  a  few  anecdotes  of  a  moral  quality  of  some 
momentary  act  or  word."  The  word  of  Canute  on 
the  sea-shore,  he  observes,  is  all  the  world  remem 
bers  of  the  Danish  conquest.  Under  the  influence  of 
this  thought,  he  seems,  for  a  time,  to  have  meditated 
composing  "a  modern  Plutarch,"  British  and  Amer 
ican — in  which  his  "Thoreau"  would  well  have 
taken  the  place  of  Cato,  and  his  "Lincoln"  a  place 
of  its  own.  His  Representative  Men  was  a  par 
tial  fulfilment  of  the  design.  But  quite  early  in  life 
Emerson  was  much  occupied  by  a  rival  thought,  thus 
recorded  in  the  fourth  volume  of  the  Journals:  "I 
said  to  Bryant  and  to  these  young  people,  that  the 
high  poetry  of  the  world  from  the  beginning  has 
been  ethical,  and  it  is  the  tendency  of  the  ripe  mod 
ern  mind  to  produce  it.  .  .  ..  As,  I  think,  no 
man  could  be  better  occupied  than  in  making  up  his 


120  AMERICANS 

own  bible  by  hearkening  to  all  those  sentences  which 
now  here,  now  there,  now  in  nursery  rhymes,  now 
in  Hebrew,  now  in  English  bards,  thrill  him  like 
the  sound  of  a  trumpet."  In  fulfilment  of  that  de 
sign  Emerson  wrote  his  great  essays. 

To  many  a  lonely  student,  obscure  and  friendless, 
meditating  in  the  long  cold  spring  and  adolescence 
of  his  talent  on  his  untried  powers,  Emerson  has 
come  as  with  the  sound  of  a  magical  trumpet,  shat 
tering  the  dungeons  of  fear,  sending  the  young 
knight  on  his  quest  inwardly  fortified  and  resolute 
to  give  soul  and  body  to  that  undertaking,  what 
ever  it  may  be,  for  which  he  was  sent  into  the  world. 
Such  is  the  primary  function  of  the  religious  and 
democratic  ethos  with  which  he  sought  to  impreg 
nate  American  letters.  He,  too,  had  been  lonely, 
obscure,  uncertain  of  his  way,  feeble,  and  prone 
to  husband  his  strength  and  gifts.  But  when  he 
found  which  way  the  planets  are  going  and  the  well 
where  the  gods  drink,  he  faltered  no  longer.  "What 
a  discovery  I  made  one  day,  that  the  more  I  spent 
the  more  I  grew,  that  it  was  as  easy  to  occupy  a 
large  place  and  do  much  work  as  an  obscure  place 
to  do  little;  and  that  in  the  winter  in  which  I  com 
municated  all  my  results  to  classes,  I  was  full  of 
new  thoughts."  To  this,  let  us  add  that  other 
thought,  so  precious  to  him  that  it  appears  repeat 
edly  in  various  forms  in  the  Journals  and  in  the 
essays:  "If  a  man  knows  the  law,  he  may  settle 
himself  in  a  shanty  in  a  pine  forest,  and  men  will 


EMERSON  121 

and  must  find  their  way  to  him  as  readily  as  if  he 
lived  in  the  City  Hall."  We  shall  keep  near  the 
main  stream  of  Emersonian  virtue,  if  we  close  with 
a  variation  and  enlargement  of  the  same  theme: 
"Penetrate  to  the  bottom  of  the  fact  that  draws 
you,  although  no  newspaper,  no  poet,  no  man,  has 
ever  yet  found  life  and  beauty  in  that  region,  and 
presently  when  men  are  whispered  by  the  gods  to 
go  and  hunt  in  that  direction,  they  shall  find  that 
they  cannot  get  to  the  point  which  they  would  reach 
without  passing  over  that  highway  which  you  have 
built.  Your  hermit's  lodge  shall  be  the  Holy  City 
and  the  Fair  of  the  whole  world." 


HAWTHORNE:   A   PURITAN   CRITIC   OF 
PURITANISM 

Of  that  group  of  eminent  New  Englanders  who 
made  American  literature  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century  it  has  become  the  fashion  among  our  youth 
to  speak  with  a  certain  condescension  as  of  country 
cousins  or  old  friends  outgrown.  Since  Emerson 
and  Lowell  and  Holmes  and  the  other  worthies  of 
the  age  laid  the  author  of  The  Scarlet  Letter  to  rest 
in  Sleepy  Hollow,  new  generations  have  arisen,  who 
have  looked  for  a  less  austere  leadership  than  New 
England  followed,  and  for  interpreters  of  appetites 
and  passions  in  human  nature  which  the  "spiritual 
patricians"  of  an  elder  time  deliberately  suppressed 
and  disdainfully  ignored.  Our  literary  historians 
tell  us  that  the  "national  period"  has  arrived,  and 
that  in  the  widened  domain  of  our  letters  the  voices 
of  the  "Puritan  aristocracy"  must  inevitably  sound 
somewhat  thin  and  provincial.  Under  the  influence 
of  European  example  our  authors,  particularly  our 
novelists,  are  learning  to  overcome  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
or  rather  the  Victorian,  diffidence.  In  the  choice 
and  treatment  of  their  themes  they  enjoy  a  liberty 

122 


HAWTHORNE  123 

which  neither  public  opinion  nor  private  conscience 
granted  to  the  novelist  of  1850;  and  with  the  new 
freedom  and  the  tolerant  national  public,  they  are 
supposed  to  have  become  more  secular,  more  sensu 
ous,  more  erudite,  and,  above  all,  more  vital  and 
realistic. 

To  whatever  disadvantages  New  England  birth 
and  breeding  exposes  the  artist,  Hawthorne  was  ex 
posed.  Born  in  Salem,  Massachusetts,  in  1804,  he 
had  in  his  veins  the  blood  of  Puritans,  counted  a 
witch-hanging  judge  among  his  ancestors,  and  was 
probably  the  first  of  his  line  who  did  not  regard 
the  writing  and  reading  of  romances  as  idleness  and 
vanity.  After  nearly  all  his  important  literary  work 
was  done  he  saw  something  of  England  and  Italy, 
but  his  experience  till  late  in  life  was  provincial, 
not  to  say  parochial,  and  he  himself  avowed  that 
New  England  was  as  large  a  lump  of  earth  as  his 
sympathies  could  embrace.  The  society  of  his 
native  town  he  found  so  unremunerative  or  so  for 
midable  that  he  lived  there  for  twelve  years,  fol 
lowing  his  graduation  from  Bowdoin,  in  virtual 
solitude,  writing  in  obscurity  and  publishing  anony 
mously  the  stories  later  collected  as  Twice  Told 
Tales.  In  personal  relations  he  ordinarily  exhibited 
a  taciturnity  and  reserve  no  doubt  fostered  by  his 
hermit  years  but  alleged  to  be  characteristic  of  those 
who  live  too  steadily  by  the  "rockbound  coast." 
In  his  art  he  maintained  a  reticence  about  many 
things  which  are  now  cried  from  the  housetops.  He 


124  AMERICANS 

lacked  the  stimulus  of  fellow-workers  in  his  own 
kind,  and  he  labored  in  a  romantic  vein  which  even 
in  his  own  day  was  on  the  point  of  appearing  old- 
fashioned.  Associated  with  an  intellectual  move 
ment  animated  by  an  hereditary  passion  for  right 
eousness,  he  was  interested  in  the  moral  significance 
of  his  narratives;  and  his  moral  sympathies  are  said 
to  have  been  at  least  deeply  tinged  with  what  the 
impatient  young  people  of  our  day  impatiently,  not 
to  say  wrathfully,  designate  as  Puritanism. 

It  should  follow  that  his  treatment  of  forbidden 
love  has  been  quite  overshadowed  by  the  master 
pieces  of  successors  working  with  so  many  superi 
orities  of  circumstance  and  method.  But  as  a  mat 
ter  of  fact  The  Scarlet  Letter  appears  to  be  as  safe 
from  competitors  as  Pilgrim's  Progress  or  Robinson 
Crusoe.  It  is  recognized  as  the  classical  treatment 
of  its  particular  theme.  Its  symbols  and  scenes  of 
guilt  and  penitence — the  red  letter  on  the  breast 
of  Hester  Prynne,  Arthur  Dimmesdale  on  the  scaf 
fold — have  fixed  themselves  in  the  memory  of  men 
like  the  figure  of  Crusoe  bending  over  the  footprint 
in  the  sand,  and  have  become  a  part  of  the  common 
stock  of  images  like  Christian  facing  the  lions  in 
the  way.  When  a  book  has  achieved  this  sort  of 
celebrity,  it  needs  ask  for  nothing  more;  it  has  en 
tered  into  immortal  life,  and  passes  through  all 
changes  of  fashion  unscathed.  But  Hawthorne  and 
this  book  have  won  the  critical  as  well  as  the  popu 
lar  tribute.  Nearly  thirty  years  after  the  publica- 


HAWTHORNE  125 

tion  of  The  Scarlet  Letter,  Henry  James,  the  most 
fastidious  and  the  most  sophisticated  of  critics,  de 
clared  him  to  be  "the  most  valuable  example  of 
the  American  genius,"  and  The  Scarlet  Letter  the 
finest  specimen  of  his  art.  And  in  1909,  Mr.  W.  C. 
Brownell,  an  exacting  critic,  as  free  from  suspicion 
of  indulgence  to  the  New  England  school  as  Henry 
James  and  more  severe  than  James  in  his  attitude 
towards  Hawthorne's  general  reputation,  finds  this 
scarlet  leaf  among  his  withered  laurels  undamaged 
by  the  ruinous  touch  of  time  or  rival  splendors. 

With  the  most  restricted  permanent  glory  Haw 
thorne  himself  would  certainly  have  been  better  con 
tented  than  with  the  widest  transitory  blaze.  If  he 
has  left  one  book  that  cannot  die,  it  is  rather  idle 
to  make  a  pathetic  story  of  his  straitened  circum 
stances  and  the  narrow  field  in  which  his  beautiful 
talent  was  perfected.  Had  he  lived  in  a  great 
literary  center,  kept  his  mind  brisk  by  frequent  in 
tercourse  with  men  of  letters,  and  enriched  his 
stores  by  travel  and  observation  of  various  societies 
in  the  "grand  style,"  his  productiorTmight  have  been 
more  abundant;  it  would  probably  have  had  more 
of  the  realistic  virtue  so  highly  valued  at  present; 
but  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  would  have  included 
The  Scarlet  Letter  or  the  other  works  in  which  we 
recognize  his  special  and  unique  quality.  For  the 
charm,  with  difficulty  definable,  which  pervades  his 
best  writing  is  due  to  the  felt  presence  of  a  subtle 
and  exquisite  spirit  that  has  dwelt  apart  from  the 


126  AMERICANS 

throng  in  still  and  shadowed  places,  preserving  with 
a  kind  of  virginal  jealousy  its  own  internal  vision 
of  beauty,  its  own  internal  scale  of  values.  If  we 
value  him  in  proportion  as  he  approaches  the  inter 
ests  and  methods  of  contemporary  realism,  we  miss 
what  is  most  precious  in  him,  namely,  his  power  of 
reducing  the  insolent  pretensions  of  circumstance  to 
insignificance,  and  of  giving  to  the  moral  and  ideal 
world  reality,  importance,  and  supreme  interest. 

Hawthorne  was  at  times  a  close  and  shrewd  ob 
server  of  external  fact,  but  he  did  not  dwell  habitu 
ally  in  the  world  of  external  fact,  and  other  men 
have  far  surpassed  him  in  their  notation  of  man 
ners  and  the  visible  aspects  of  nature.  External 
nature  he  tended  to  regard  as  hieroglyphic  and  sym 
bolical.  It  engaged  his  attention  chiefly  for  the  cor 
respondences  which  he  could  discern  between  it  and 
the  forms  and  relations  of  his  ideas.  His  note 
books  are  full  of  brief  jottings  of  apparently  trivial 
scenes  and  incidents  intended  to  serve  as  starting 
points  for  his  interpretive  imagination:  "A  cloud  in 
the  shape  of  an  old  woman  kneeling,  with  arms  ex 
tended  towards  the  moon."  "An  old  looking-glass. 
Somebody  finds  out  the  secret  of  making  all  the 
images  that  have  been  reflected  in  it  pass  back  again 
across  its  surface."  "A  person  to  catch  fireflies,  and 
try  to  kindle  his  household  fire  with  them.  It  would 
be  symbolical  of  something."  Underlying  this 
search  for  ulterior  meanings  and  spiritual  signifi 
cances  there  was  doubtless  in  Hawthorne  a  certain 


HAWTHORNE  127 

disdain  for  primary  meanings,  for  the  immediate 
gross  reports  of  the  senses.  His  imagination  he 
sets  continually  at  work  contriving  an  avenue  of 
escape  from  the  vulgar  and  the  humdrum.  On  a 
fine  day  in  February  he  notes  as  follows  the  aspira 
tion  of  the  poor  wingless  biped  man  to  raise  him 
self  a  little  above  the  earth:  "How  much  mud  and 
mire,  how  many  pools  of  unclean  water,  how  many 
slippery  foot-steps,  and  perchance  heavy  tumbles, 
might  be  avoided,  if  one  could  tread  but  six  inches 
above  the  crust  of  this  world.  Physically  we  cannot 
do  this;  our  bodies  cannot;  but  it  seems  to  me  that 
our  hearts  and  minds  may  keep  themselves  above 
moral  mudpuddles  and  other  discomforts  of  the 
soul's  pathway." 

To  the  development  of  his  peculiar  imaginative 
faculty  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  his 
circumstances,  far  from  being  inauspicious,  were 
highly  favorable — as  favorable,  perhaps,  as  exile 
in  Ireland  was  to  his  favorite  poet,  the  author  of 
The  Faerie  Queene.  Solitude  drives  the  hungry 
man  to  intensive  cultivation  of  the  inner  life,  and 
a  plain  domicile  reminds  him  of  the  necessity  of 
building  for  his  soul  a  more  stately  mansion.  After 
his  engagement  to  Sophia  Peabody,  looking  back  in 
1840  upon  the  long  lonely  years  when  he  was  learn 
ing  his  art  in  the  locked  room  in  Salem,  he  feels 
the  pathos  of  his  earnest  and  externally  cheerless 
prime,  and  yet  he  testifies,  in  a  passage  deeply  mov 
ing  and  beautiful,  that  those  were  the  richest  and 


128  AMERICANS 

happiest  years  of  his  life  till  love  transformed  it; 
and  in  the  quiet  exultation  of  the  new  emotion  he 
blesses  them  still  because  they  made  and  kept  him 
fit  for  the  transformation: 

.  .  .  Here  I  sit  in  my  old  accustomed  cham 
ber,  where  I  used  to  sit  in  days  gone  by.  .  .  . 
Here  I  have  written  many  tales — many  that  have 
been  burned  to  ashes,  many  that  doubtless  deserved 
the  same  fate.  This  claims  to  be  called  a  haunted 
chamber,  for  thousands  upon  thousands  of  visions 
have  appeared  to  me  in  it;  and  some  few  of  them 
have  become  visible  to  the  world.  If  ever  I  should 
have  a  biographer,  he  ought  to  make  great  mention 
of  this  chamber  in  my  memoirs,  because  so  much  of 
my  lonely  youth  was  wasted  here,  and  here  my  mind 
and  character  were  formed;  and  here  I  have  been 
glad  and  hopeful,  and  here  I  have  been  despondent. 
And  he^'e  I  sat  a  long,  long  time,  waiting  patiently 
for  the  world  to  know  me,  and  sometimes  wondering 
why  it  did  not  know  me  sooner,  or  whether  it  would 
ever  know  me  at  all — at  least,  till  I  were  in  my 
grave.  And  sometimes  it  seemed  as  if  I  were  al 
ready  in  the  grave,  with  only  life  enough  to  be 
chilled  and  benumbed.  But  oftener  I  was  happy — 
at  least  as  happy  as  I  then  knew  how  to  be,  or  was 
aware  of  the  possibility  of  being.  By  and  by,  the 
world  found  me  out  in  my  lonely  chamber,  and 
called  me  forth — not,  indeed,  with  a  loud  roar  of 
acclamation,  but  rather  with  a  still,  small  voice — 
and  forth  I  went,  but  found  nothing  in  the  world 
that  I  thought  preferable  to  my  old  solitude  till 
now.  .  .  .  And  now  I  begin  to  understand  why  I 
was  imprisoned  so  many  years  in  this  lonely  cham 
ber,  and  why  I  could  never  break  through  the  view- 


HAWTHORNE  129 

less  bolts  and  bars;  for  if  I  had  sooner  made  escape 
into  the  world,  I  should  have  grown  hard  and  rough, 
and  been  covered  with  earthly  dust,  and  my  heart 
might  have  become  callous  by  rude  encounters  with 
the  multitude,  .  .  .  but  living  in  solitude  till  the 
fulness  of  time  was  come,  I  still  kept  the  dew  of 
my  youth  and  the  freshness  of  my  heart.  ...  I 
used  to  think  I  could  imagine  all  passions,  all  feel 
ings,  and  states  of  the  heart  and  mind;  but  how 
little  did  I  know!  .  .  .  Indeed,  we  are  but 
shadows;  we  are  not  endowed  with  real  life,  and 
all  that  seems  most  real  about  us  is  but  the  thinnest 
substance  of  a  dream — till  the  heart  be  touched. 
That  touch  creates  us — then  we  begin  to  be — 
thereby  we  are  beings  of  reality  and  inheritors  of 
eternity x 

By  the  time  he  was  appointed  weigher  and  gauger 
at  the  Boston  Custom  House,  in  1839,  Hawthorne 
had  learned  to  live,  somewhat  according  to  the 
Emersonian  injunction,  in  business,  if  not  in  society, 
with  his  hands  and  in  solitude  with  his  head  and 
heart.  One  who  reads  in  the  American  Note-Books 
his  memoranda  of  that  period  cannot  fail  to  be  im 
pressed  with  the  fact  that  his  thraldom  and  drudg 
ery  and  the  sordidness  of  his  daily  occupation  inten 
sified  his  delight  in  his  inner  freedom  and  perfected 
it.  All  day  long  he  measures  coal  in  a  black  little 
British  schooner,  in  a  dismal  dock  at  the  north  end 
of  the  city.  He  thinks  that  his  profession  is  some 
what  akin  to  that  of  a  chimney-sweeper.  He  grieves 


1  American  Note-Books,  October  4,  1840. 


130  AMERICANS 

occasionally  at  the  havoc  it  makes  with  his  wits 
and  at  the  waste  of  blessed  hours;  yet  he  thanks  it 
for  teaching  him  to  "know  a  politician,"  and  to  ac 
quit  himself  like  a  man  in  a  world  of  men.  Then 
this  strange  coal-gauger  walks  home  under  the 
cloud-rack  of  a  scattered  storm — "so  glorious  in 
deed,  and  so  lovely,  that  I  had  a  fantasy  of  heaven's 
being  broken  into  fleecy  fragments  and  dispersed 
through  space,  with  its  blest  inhabitants  dwelling 
blissfully  upon  those  scattered  islands."  He  enters 
his  room  and  lies  down  to  read  his  Spenser,  or 
records  in  his  journal  some  such  half-mystical  ex 
perience  as  this:  "Besides  the  bleak,  unkindly  air, 
I  have  been  plagued  by  two  sets  of  coal-shovellers 
at  the  same  time,  and  have  been  obliged  to  keep 
two  separate  tallies  simultaneously.  But  I  was  con 
scious  this  was  merely  a  vision  and  a  fantasy,  and 
that,  in  reality,  I  was  not  half  frozen  by  the  bitter 
blast,  nor  tormented  by  those  grimy  coal-heavers; 
but  that  I  was  basking  quietly  in  the  sunshine  of 
eternity.  .  .  .  Any  sort  of  bodily  and  earthly  tor 
ment  may  serve  to  make  us  sensible  that  we  have 
a  soul  that  is  not  within  the  jurisdiction  of  such 
shadowy  demons, — it  separates  the  immortal  within 
us  from  the  mortal."  2 

It  was  doubtless  in  the  hope  of  bringing  the  inner 
and  the  outer  worlds  into  harmony  that  Hawthorne 
in  the  spring  of  1841  joined  the  socialistic  commu- 


9  American  Note-Books,  April  7,  1840. 


HAWTHORNE  131 

nity  at  Brook  Farm,  an  adventure  commemorated 
in  his  Blithedale  Romance.  His  sojourn  among 
these  interesting  Utopians  seems  to  have  dispelled 
the  hope  and  to  have  confirmed  his  instinctive  deep- 
seated  individualism.  It  is  significant  that  Clover- 
dale  even  at  Brook  Farm  retreats  from  his  social 
istic  brethren  to  a  hermitage  in  a  circumjacent  wood 
— "It  symbolized  my  individuality,  and  aided  me 
in  keeping  it  inviolate."  "The  real  Me,"  Haw 
thorne  declared  later,  "was  never  an  associate  of 
the  community;  there  has  been  a  spectral  Appear 
ance  there,  sounding  the  horn  at  daybreak,  and 
milking  the  cows,  and  hoeing  potatoes,  and  raking 
hay,  toiling  in  the  sun,  and  doing  me  the  honor  to 
assume  my  name.  But  this  spectre  was  not  my 
self."  8  The  effort  to  externalize  felicity  and  to 
make  of  it  common  property  impressed  him  on  the 
whole  as  a  failure,  renewing  in  him  the  old  passion 
for  seclusion  in  which  "to  think,  to  feel,  to  dream." 
His  cutting  private  judgment  of  Margaret  Fuller, 
the  Zenobia  of  The  Blithedale  Romance,  represents 
his  mature  conviction  that  beauty  and  perfectness 
of  character  result  from  the  gradual  unfolding  of 
some  innermost  germ  of  divine  grace,  and  are  un 
attainable  by  mechanical  means  and  local  applica 
tions.  As  this  passage  illustrates  forcibly  an  aspect 
of  Hawthorne  ordinarily  little  emphasized,  his  occa 
sionally  severe  and  penetrating  critical  faculty,  it 


*  Moncure  Conway's  Hawthorne,  p.  89. 


132  AMERICANS 

may  be  quoted  here  to  offset  our  emphasis  upon  his 
tendency  to  revery  and  fantasy : 

She  was  a  person  anxious  to  try  all  things,  and 
fill  up  her  experience  in  all  directions;  she  had  a 
strong  and  coarse  nature,  which  she  had  done  her 
utmost  to  refine,  with  infinite  pains;  but  of  course 
it  could  only  be  superficially  changed.  The  solution 
of  the  riddle  lies  in  this  direction;  nor  does  one's 
conscience  revolt  at  the  idea  of  thus  solving  it;  for 
(at  least,  this  is  my  own  experience)  Margaret  has 
not  left  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  those  who  knew 
her  any  deep  witness  of  her  integrity  and  purity. 
She  was  a  great  humbug, — of  course  with  much 
talent  and  much  moral  reality,  or  else  she  could 
never  have  been  so  great  a  humbug.  But  she  had 
stuck  herself  full  of  borrowed  qualities,  which  she 
chose  to  provide  herself  with,  but  which  had  no  root 
in  her.  ...  It  was  such  an  awful  joke,  that  she 
should  have  resolved — in  all  sincerity,  no  doubt — 
to  make  herself  the  greatest,  wisest,  best  woman  of 
the  age.  And  to  that  end  she  set  to  work  on  her 
strong,  heavy,  unpliable,  and,  in  many  respects,  de 
fective  and  evil  nature,  and  adorned  it  with  a  mo 
saic  of  admirable  qualities,  such  as  she  chose  to 
possess;  putting  in  here  a  splendid  talent  and  there 
a  moral  excellence,  and  polishing  each  separate 
piece,  and  the  whole  together,  till  it  seemed  to  shine 
afar  and  dazzle  all  who  saw  it.  She  took  credit  to 
herself  for  having  been  her  own  Redeemer,  if  not 
her  own  Creator;  and,  indeed,  she  was  far  more 
a  work  of  art  than  any  of  Mozier's  statues.  But 
she  was  not  working  on  an  inanimate  substance, 
like  marble  or  clay;  there  was  something  within  her 
that  she  could  not  possibly  come  at,  to  re-create  or 


HAWTHORNE  133 

refine  it;  and,  by  and  by,  this  rude  old  potency  be 
stirred  itself,  and  undid  all  her  labor  in  the  twink 
ling  of  an  eye.  On  the  whole,  I  do  not  know,  but 
I  like  her  the  better  for  it;  because  she  proved  her 
self  a  very  woman  after  all,  and  fell  as  the  weakest 
of  her  sisters  might.4 

After  his  departure  from  Brook  Farm,  Haw 
thorne  married  that  fine  intelligent  Emersonian 
woman  Sophia  Peabody,  July  9,  1842,  and  lived 
for  the  next  four  years  at  the  Old  Manse  in  Con 
cord.  There  in  former  days,  as  he  remembers  in 
the  quietly  rapturous  introduction  to  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse,  Emerson  had  written  Nature;  "for 
he  was  then  an  inhabitant  of  the  Manse,  and  used 
to  watch  the  Assyrian  dawn  and  Paphian  sunset  and 
moonrise  from  the  summit  of  our  eastern  hill."  For 
Hawthorne  it  was  a  return  from  an  uncomfortable 
hot-bed  of  culture  to  Eden,  and  he  was  accustomed 
indeed  to  speak  of  himself  and  his  wife  at  that 
period  as  Adam  and  Eve.  In  a  serene  felicity  of 
mutual  understanding  and  perfect  sympathy  they 
dwelt  in  their  solitude  a  deux,  each  sufficient  for  the 
other,  though  occasionally  he  would  hunt  Indian 
arrowheads  or  water  lilies  with  Thoreau  and  Ellery 
Channing,  or  they  would  meet  Emerson  "in  the 
woodpaths,  or  sometimes  in  our  avenue,  with  that 
pure,  intellectual  gleam  diffused  about  his  presence 
like  the  garment  of  a  shining  one;  and  he,  so  quiet, 


4  Extract  from  Roman  Journal  quoted  in  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
and  His  Wife,  by  Julian  Hawthorne,  1889,  vol.  I,  pp.  260  ff. 


134  AMERICANS 

so  simple,  so  without  pretension,  encountering  each 
man  alive  as  if  expecting  to  receive  more  than  he 
could  impart."  At  another  period,  he  says,  "I,  too, 
might  have  asked  of  this  prophet  the  master  word 
that  would  solve  me  the  riddle  of  the  universe, 
but  now,  being  happy,  I  felt  as  if  there  were  no  , 
question  to  be  put,  and  therefore  admired  Emerson 
as  a  poet  of  deep  beauty  and  austere  tenderness, 
but  sought  nothing  from  him  as  a  philosopher." 

This  deep  happiness  of  the  Hawthornes,  as 
nearly  perfect  as  any  recorded  in  literature,  this 
happiness  that  asked  little  of  friends  or  fortune  or 
metaphysical  philosophy,  was  in  truth  for  both  of 
them  the  fruit  of  solitude,  the  reward  of  a  pro 
longed  silent  discipline  in  living,  as  the  Transcen- 
dentalists  would  say,  "in  the  Ideal,"  a  discipline  that 
determined  the  level  of  their  meeting  and  enabled 
them,  when  they  were  united,  to  maintain  without 
effort  their  ideal  relations.  To  her  in  1839,  in  the 
days  of  their  engagement,  he  had  written:  "I  never, 
till  now,  had  a  friend  who  could  give  me  repose; 
all  have  disturbed  me,  and,  whether  for  pleasure 
or  pain,  it  was  still  disturbance.  But  peace  over 
flows  from  your  heart  into  mine.  Then  I  feel  that 
there  is  a  Now,  and  that  Now  must  be  always  calm 
and  happy,  and  that  sorrow  and  evil  are  but  phan 
toms  that  seem  to  flit  across  it."  °  Of  him,  in  Octo 
ber,  1842,  she  writes  to  her  mother:  "His  will  is 

6  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife,  vol.  I,  p.  203. 


HAWTHORNE  135 

strong,  but  not  to  govern  others.  He  is  so  simple, 
so  just,  so  tender,  so  magnanimous,  that  my  highest 
instinct  could  only  correspond  with  his  will.  I  never 
knew  such  delicacy  of  nature.  His  panoply  of  re 
serve  is  a  providential  shield  and  breastplate.  .  .  . 
He  is  completely  pure  from  earthliness.  He  is 
under  the  dominion  of  his  intellect  and  sentiments. 
Was  ever  such  a  union  of  power  and  gentleness, 
softness  and  spirit,  passion  and  reason?"  6  As  this 
was  written  but  two  or  three  months  after  mar 
riage,  it  may  be  subject  to  interpretation  as  the 
sweet  effusion  of  an  uncritical  young  bride.  But 
living  with  one's  husband  eight  years  on  a  few  hun 
dred  dollars  a  year  ordinarily  makes  an  adequate 
critic  of  the  most  emotional  bride.  Hear  this  same 
witness  eight  years  later : 

He  is  as  severe  as  a  stoic  about  all  personal 
comforts,  and  never  in  his  life  allowed  himself  a 
luxury.  It  is  exactly  upon  him,  therefore,  that  I 
would  like  to  shower  luxuries,  because  he  has  such 
a  spiritual  taste  for  beauty.  It  is  both  wonderful 
and  admirable  to  see  how  his  taste  for  splendor  and 
perfection  is  not  the  slightest  temptation  to  him; 
how  wholly  independent  he  is  of  what  he  would 
like,  all  things  being  equal.  Beauty  and  the  love 
of  it,  in  him,  are  the  true  culmination  of  the  good 
and  true,  and  there  is  no  beauty  to  him  without 
these  bases.  He  has  perfect  dominion  over  himself 
in  every  respect,  so  that  to  do  the  highest,  wisest, 
loveliest  thing  is  not  the  least  effort  to  him,  any 

'Ibid.,  pp.  271-2. 


136  AMERICANS 

more  than  it  is  to  a  baby  to  be  innocent.  ...  I 
never  knew  such  loftiness,  so  simply  borne.  I  have 
never  known  him  to  stoop  from  it  in  the  most  trivial 
household  matter,  any  more  than  in  a  larger  or 
more  public  one.  If  the  Hours  make  out  to  reach 
him  in  his  high  sphere,  their  wings  are  very  strong. 
But  I  have  never  thought  of  him  as  in  time,  and 
so  the  Hours  have  nothing  to  do  with  him.  Happy, 
happiest  is  the  wife  who  can  bear  such  and  so  sin 
cere  testimony  to  her  husband  after  eight  years' 
intimate  union.7 

Is  this  the  portrait  of  a  Puritan?  If  Puritanism 
means,  as  many  of  our  over-heated  young  people 
would  have  it  mean,  fear  of  ecclesiastical  and  social 
censure,  slavish  obedience  to  a  rigorous  moral  code, 
a  self-torturing  conscience,  harsh  judgments  of  the 
frailties  of  one's  fellows,  morbid  asceticism,  insensi 
bility  and  hostility  to  the  beauties  of  nature  and  art, 
Hawthorne  was  as  little  of  a  Puritan  as  any  man 
that  ever  lived.  But  if  Puritanism  in  America  means 
to-day  what  the  lineal  and  spiritual  descendants  of 
the  Puritans  exemplified  at  their  best  in  Emerson's 
New  England — emancipation  from  ecclesiastical 
and  social  oppression,  escape  from  the  extortion  of 
the  senses  and  the  tyranny  of  things,  a  conscious 
ness  at  least  partly  liberated  from  the  impositions 
of  space  and  time,  freedom  for  self-dominion,  a 
hopeful  and  exultant  effort  to  enter  into  right,  and 
noble,  and  harmonious  relations  with  the  highest 
impulses  of  one's  fellows,  and  a  vision,  a  love,  a 


*Ibid.,  pp.  372-3. 


HAWTHORNE  137 

pursuit  of  the  beauty  which  has  its  basis  in  "the 
good  and  true" — if  Puritanism  means  these  things, 
then  Hawthorne  was  a  Puritan.  If,  however,  our 
young  people  will  not  permit  us  to  use  the  term  in 
this  high  derivative  sense,  if  they  persist  in  employ 
ing  it  as  a  term  of  dire  derogation,  then  let  us  call 
Hawthorne  a  Transcendentalist,  let  us  call  him  a 
subtle  critic  and  satirist  of  Puritanism  from  the 
Transcendental  point  of  view.  But  let  us  make  this 
concession  to  our  over-heated  young  people  with  a 
strict  understanding  that  in  return  they  shall  abjure 
their  ill  custom  of  applying  to  a  fanatic  or  to  a 
starched  hypocrite  the  same  term  that  they  apply 
to  Emerson.  If  Puritanism  is  to  mean  what  they 
would  have  it,  they  must  cease  and  refrain  entirely 
from  referring  to  the  leaders  of  the  Renaissance  In 
New  England  as  Puritans.  The  essence  of  that 
movement  of  which  Hawthorne  is  an  admirable 
representative  is  a  deliverance  from  the  letter  of 
the  law  and  a  recovery  of  happiness  through  the 
right  uses  of  the  imagination. 

The  close  relationship  between  Hawthorne's 
Transcendental  point  of  view  and  the  character  of 
his  fiction  has  hardly  received  the  attention  that  it 
deserves.  Henry  James,  who  can  with  difficulty 
forgive  him  for  not  being  a  realist,  declares  that 
"he  was  not  a  man  with  a  literary  theory,"  and 
goes  on  to  complain  that  "he  has  been  almost  culpa 
bly  indifferent  to  his  opportunities  for  commemo 
rating  the  variations  of  colloquial  English  that  may 


138  AMERICANS 

be  observed  in  the  New  World."  But  there  is 
abundant  evidence  that  Hawthorne  was  conscious 
of  the  realistic  method  and  that  he  deliberately  re 
jected  it.  What  should  a  man  whose  wife  "never 
thought  of  him  as  in  time"  care  for  the  variations 
of  colloquial  English  in  the  New  World?  It  is  very 
clear  that  he  sought  to  winnow  out  of  his  fiction 
everything  that  can  be  brought  or  carried  away  by 
the  Hours.  His  literary  theory  becomes  explicit 
enough  in  his  exquisite  chapter  on  "Lichfield  and 
Uttoxeter"  in  Our  Old  Home.  He  had  made  a 
pilgrimage  "to  indulge  a  solemn  and  high  emotion" 
to  the  scene  of  Samuel  Johnson's  penance  in  the 
market  place  of  Uttoxeter.  Arrived  at  the  spot 
where  his  pious  errand  should  have  been  consum 
mated,  he  confesses  that  his  first  act  was  to  step 
into  a  hostelry  and  order  a  dinner  of  bacon  and 
greens,  mutton-chops,  gooseberry  pudding,  and  ale 
— "a  sufficient  meal  for  six  yeomen."  On  enquiry 
he  finds  the  Doctor's  fellow-townsmen  generally  un 
acquainted  with  the  story  which  had  consecrated 
the  place  "in  the  heart  of  a  stranger  from  three 
thousand  miles  over  the  sea."  And  his  own  emo 
tions  remain  unstirred  till  he  has  left  the  visible 
Uttoxeter  behind  him  and  returned  to  the  Uttox 
eter  of  his  inner  vision.  His  comment  on  this  inci 
dent  may  serve  us  as  a  commentary  on  his  literary 
method: 

A  sensible  man  had  better  not  let  himself  be 
betrayed  into  these  attempts  to  realize  the  things 


HAWTHORNE  139 

which  he  has  dreamed  about,  and  which,  when  they 
cease  to  be  purely  ideal  in  his  mind,  will  have  lost 
the  truest  of  their  truth,  the  loftiest  and  profoundest 
part  of  their  power  over  his  sympathies.  Facts,  as 
we  really  find  them,  whatever  poetry  they  may  in 
volve,  are  covered  with  a  stony  excrescence  of  prose, 
resembling  the  crust  on  a  beautiful  sea-shell,  and 
they  never  show  their  most  delicate  and  divinest 
colors  until  we  shall  have  dissolved  away  their 
grosser  actualities  by  steeping  them  long  in  a  power 
ful  menstruum  of  thought.  And  seeking  to  actualize 
them  again,  we  do  but  renew  the  crust.  If  this  were 
otherwise — if  the  moral  sublimity  of  a  great  fact 
depended  in  any  degree  on  its  garb  of  external 
circumstances,  tnings  which  change  and  decay — it 
could  not  itself  be  immortal  and  ubiquitous,  and 
only  a  brief  point  of  time  and  a  little  neighborhood 
would  be  spiritually  nourished  by  its  grandeur  and 
beauty." 

When  Hawthorne  was  settled  in  the  Old  Manse, 
an  abode  so  happily  adapted  to  his  still  contempla 
tive  habit,  he  had  pondered,  he  intimates,  various 
grave  literary  projects,  and  had  "resolved  at  least 
to  achieve  a  novel  that  should  evolve  some  deep 
lesson  and  should  possess  physical  substance  enough 
to  stand  alone."  He  wrote  there  some  of  his  finest 
short  stories,  "The  Birthmark,"  "Young  Goodman 
Brown,"  "Rappaccini's  Daughter,"  "Roger  Mal- 
vin's  Burial,"  "The  Artist  of  the  Beautiful";  but 
the  production  of  his  novel  was  to  take  place 'in 
another  scene  and  under  a  rather  singular  stimulus. 
By  1846  the  prospect  of  being  able  to  make  both 


140  AMERICANS 

ends  meet  in  Concord  was  so  unpromising  that  to 
relieve  himself  of  the  anxiety  occasioned  by  his 
small  debts  and  his  keen  sense  of  obligation  he  ob 
tained  appointment  as  surveyor  of  customs  at  Salem. 
How  he  meditated  Hester  Prynne's  story  as  he 
passed  "with  a  hundred-fold  repetition,  the  long 
extent  from  the  front-door  of  the  Custom-House  to 
the  side  entrance,  and  back  again,"  he  has  told  in 
his  fascinating  introductory  chapter.  And  there  he 
admits  that  despite  his  long  practice  in  creative 
revery  he  found  himself  not  wholly  independent  of 
circumstances  and  "atmospheric"  conditions.  His 
imagination  was  dimmed,  and  the  shadowy  crea 
tures  of  his  dream  turned  upon  him  and  said: 
"What  have  you  to  do  with  us?  The  little  power 
you  might  once  have  possessed  over  the  tribe  of 
unrealities  is  gone  I  You  have  bartered  it  for  a  pit 
tance  of  the  public  gold.  Go,  then,  and  earn  your 
wages."  After  three  years  of  service,  which  we 
understand  was  efficiently  performed,  the  politicians 
turned  him  out  of  office.  Him  the  dismissal  appears 
to  have  filled  temporarily  with  chagrin  and  a  meas 
ure  of  bitterness;  but  Mrs.  Hawthorne,  in  her  ad 
mirable  superiority  to  the  loss  of  their  visible  means 
of  support,  showed  herself  at  this  crisis  a  guardian 
angel — or  at  least  a  more  finished  Transcendentalist 
than  her  husband.  Let  us  have  this  beautiful  inci 
dent  as  reported  by  George  Parsons  Lathrop : 

On  finding  himself  superseded,  he  walked  away 
from  the  Custom-House,  returned  home,  and  enter- 


HAWTHORNE  141 

ing  sat  down  in  the  nearest  chair,  without  uttering 
a  word.  Mrs.  Hawthorne  asked  him  if  he  was  well. 

"Well  enough,"  was  the  answer. 

"What  is  the  matter,  then?"  said  she.  "Are  you 
'decapitated'?" 

He  replied  with  gloom  that  he  was,  and  that  the 
occurrence  was  no  joke. 

"Oh,"  said  his  wife,  gayly,  "now  you  can  write 
your  Romance !"  For  he  had  told  her  several  times 
that  he  had  a  romance  "growling"  in  him. 

"Write  my  Romance !"  he  exclaimed.  "But  what 
are  we  to  do  for  bread  and  rice,  next  week?" 

"I  will  take  care  of  that,"  she  answered.  "And 
I  will  tell  Ann  to  put  a  fire  in  your  study,  now."  8 

Hawthorne's  introductory  account  of  the  origin 
of  the  romance  in  papers  and  relics  discovered  in 
the  Custom-House  is  a  part  of  the  fiction.  The 
original  germ  of  it  had  probably  begun  to  strike 
root  in  his  imagination  years  before  when  he  had 
come  upon  an  historical  record  of  a  punishment  like 
Hester's.  In  "Endicott  and  the  Red  Cross"  (in 
cluded  in  the  second  installment  of  Twice  Told 
Tales),  he  had  introduced  for  a  moment  among  a 
group  of  culprits  suffering  various  ingenious  penal 
ties,  "a  young  woman,  with  no  mean  share  of 
beauty,  whose  doom  it  was  to  wear  the  letter  A 
on  the  breast  of  her  gown,  in  the  eyes  of  all  the 
world  and  her  own  children.  And  even  her  own 
children  knew  what  that  initial  signified.  Sporting 


""A  Biographical  Sketch  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,"  in  Tales, 
Sketches,  and  Other  Papers  by  N.  H,  Houghton  Mifflin,  n.  d., 
p-496. 


142  AMERICANS 

with  her  infamy,  the  lost  and  desperate  creature 
had  embroidered  the  fatal  token  in  scarlet  cloth, 
with  golden  thread  and  the  nicest  art  of  needle- 
work;  so  that  the  capital  A  might  have  been  thought 
to  mean  Admirable,  or  anything  rather  than  Adul 
teress."  There,  for  him,  was  the  typical  nucleus  of 
an  imaginative  tale. 

We  have  not  much  information  about  the  course 
of  its  development  into  The  Scarlet  Letter  beyond 
what  James  T.  Fields,  the  publisher,  has  related  in 
his  Yesterdays  With  Authors.  In  the  winter  of 
1849  Fields  went  to  Salem  to  call  on  Hawthorne 
and  to  urge  him  to  publish  something.  His  author, 
whom  he  seems  to  have  found  in  low  spirits,  replied 
that  he  had  nothing  to  publish,  and  sent  him  away 
empty-handed.  But  before  he  had  reached  the 
street,  Hawthorne  overtook  him  and  thrust  into  his 
hands  a  manuscript  which  he  read  on  the  way  back 
to  Boston.  It  was  a  sketch  or  first  draft  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter.  "Before  I  slept  that  night,"  says 
Fields,  "I  wrote  him  a  note  all  aglow  with  admira 
tion  of  the  marvellous  story  he  had  put  into  my 
hands,  and  told  him  I  would  come  again  to  Salem 
the  next  day  and  arrange  for  its  publication.  I  went 
on  in  such  an  amazing  state  of  excitement,  when 
we  met  again  in  the  little  house,  that  he  would  not 
believe  that  I  was  really  in  earnest.  He  seemed  to 
think  I  was  beside  myself,  and  laughed  sadly  at  my 
enthusiasm."  In  the  English  Note-Books,  Haw- 


HAWTHORNE  143 

thorne  instances  as  a  case  of  remarkable  phlegm 
the  fact  that  Thackeray  read  the  touching  last  num 
ber  of  The  Newcomes  to  James  Russell  Lowell  and 
William  Story  in  a  cider-cellar.  In  this  connection 
he  remarks:  "I  cannot  but  wonder  at  his  coolness 
in  respect  to  his  own  pathos,  and  compare  it  with 
my  emotions,  when  I  read  the  last  scene  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter  to  my  wife,  just  after  writing  it — 
tried  to  read  it  rather,  for  my  voice  swelled  and 
heaved,  as  if  I  were  tossed  up  and  down  on  an 
ocean  as  it  subsides  after  a  storm.  But  I  was  in  a 
very  nervous  state  then,  having  gone  through  a 
great  diversity  of  emotion,  while  writing  it,  for 
many  months.  I  think  I  have  never  overcome  my 
own  adamant  in  any  other  instance."  9 

The  success  of  the  book  on  its  publication  in  1856 
was  immediate  and,  considering  the  restrictions  put 
upon  novel  reading  in  the  days  of  our  fathers  and 
grandfathers,  extensive.  In  a  striking  passage  of  a 
most  charming  piece  of  criticism,  Henry  James 
records  the  reverberation  of  its  fame  registered  in 
his  own  then  youthful  breast,  an  instrument  more 
than  ordinarily  sensitive  to  such  impressions,  yet 
reacting  in  a  sufficiently  representative  fashion  to 
serve  as  a  general  indicator: 

.  .  ,  The  writer  of  these  lines,  who  was  a  child 
at  the  time,  remembers  dimly  the  sensation  the  book 
produced,  and  the  little  shudder  with  which  people 

'English  Note-Books,  September  14,  1855,  quoted  by  James. 


144  AMERICANS 

alluded  to  it,  as  if  a  peculiar  horror  were  mixed 
with  its  attractions.  He  was  too  young  to  read  it 
himself;  but  its  title,  upon  which  he  fixed  his  eyes 
as  the  book  lay  upon  the  table,  had  a  mysterious 
charm.  He  had  a  vague  belief,  indeed,  that  the 
"letter"  in  question  was  one  of  the  documents  that 
come  by  the  post,  and  it  was  a  source  of  perpetual 
wonderment  to  him  that  it  should  be  of  such  an  un 
accustomed  hue.  Of  course  it  was  difficult  to  explain 
to  a  child  the  significance  of  poor  Hester  Prynne's 
blood-coloured  A.  But  the  mystery  was  at  last 
partly  dispelled  by  his  being  taken  to  see  a  collec 
tion  of  pictures  (the  annual  exhibition  of  the  Na 
tional  Academy),  where  he  encountered  a  represen 
tation  of  a  pale,  handsome  woman,  in  a  quaint  black 
dress  and  a  white  coif,  holding  between  her  knees 
an  elfish-looking  little  girl,  fantastically  dressed, 
and  crowned  with  flowers.  Embroidered  on  the 
woman's  breast  was  a  great  crimson  A,  over  which 
the  child's  fingers,  as  she  glanced  strangely  out  of 
the  picture,  were  maliciously  playing.  I  was  told 
that  this  was  Hester  Prynne  and  little  Pearl,  and 
that  when  I  grew  older  I  might  read  their  interest 
ing  history.  But  the  picture  remained  vividly  im 
printed  on  my  mind;  I  had  been  vaguely  frightened 
and  made  uneasy  by  it;  and  when,  years  afterwards, 
I  first  read  the  novel,  I  seemed  to  myself  to  have 
read  it  before,  and  to  be  familiar  with  its  two 
strange  heroines.  I  mention  this  incident  simply 
as  an  indication  of  the  degree  to  which  the  success 
of  The  Scarlet  Letter  had  made  the  book  what  is 
called  an  actuality.  .  .  .  The  book  was  the  finest 
piece  of  imaginative  writing  yet  put  forth  in  the 
country.  There  was  a  consciousness  of  this  in  the 
welcome  that  was  given  it — a  satisfaction  in  the 


HAWTHORNE  145 

idea  of  America  having  produced  a  novel  that  be 
longed  to  literature,  and  to  the  forefront  of  it. 
Something  might  at  last  be  sent  to  Europe  as  exqui 
site  in  quality  as  anything  that  had  been  received, 
and  the  best  of  it  was  that  the  thing  was  absolutely 
American;  it  belonged  to  the  soil,  to  the  air;  it  came 
out  of  the  very  heart  of  New  England.10 

No  commentator  can  fail  to  remark  that  the 
story  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale  and  Hester  Prynne 
begins  where  a  seductive  love-story  hastens  to  end, 
with  the  bitterness  of  stolen  waters  and  the  unpala- 
tableness  of  bread  eaten  in  secret.  Without  one 
glance  backward  over  the  secret  path  that  led  to 
the  jail  door,  we  are  invited  to  fix  our  attention 
upon  the  sombre  drama  of  punishment,  atonement, 
remorse.  "To  Hawthorne's  imagination,"  says 
Henry  James,  "the  fact  that  these  two  persons  had 
loved  each  other  too  well  was  of  an  interest  com 
paratively  vulgar;  what  appealed  to  him  was  the 
idea  of  their  moral  situation  in  the  long  years  that 
follow."  This  is  probably  to  represent  the  case  as 
more  exclusively  a  matter  of  artistic  interest  than 
it  was  to  Hawthorne,  though  not  more  so  than  it 
might  have  been  to  James.  When,  in  the  Inferno, 
Dante  confronts  a  pair  of  lovers  at  a  similar  point 
in  their  progress,  the  first  question  he  raises  is  how 
they  fell  into  that  predicament.  Hawthorne  would 
hardly  have  regarded  either  the  answer  or  the  curi- 

10 Hawthorne  (in  The  English  Men  of  Letters  series),  1879, 
pp.  107-8. 


146  AMERICANS 

osity  which  evoked  it  as  vulgar.  But  by  refraining 
in  The  Scarlet  Letter  from  lifting  the  veil  that  hides 
the  antecedent  history  of  this  passionate  experience 
he  evades  what  would  have  been  for  him,  or  for 
any  novelist,  the  extremely  difficult  problem  of 
representing  Arthur  Dimmesdale  in  love.  By  this 
abridgment  he  obtains,  furthermore,  an  intense  con 
centration  of  interest  upon  that  portion  of  the  his 
tory  which  a  writer  wishing  to  "evolve  some  deep 
lesson"  would  desire  to  emphasize.  Finally,  it  is 
obvious  that  he  has  striven  sedulously  to  avoid  all 
occasion  for  exhibiting  an  aberrant  passion  in  its 
possible  aspects  of  alluring  and  romantic  glamour, 
so  that  one  desperate  embrace  of  the  lovers  and 
Hester's  entreaty  for  forgiveness  under  the  deep 
shadow  of  foreboding  (in  the  seventeenth  chapter) 
remain  almost  the  only  vivid  evidence  and  certifi 
cation  of  their  continuing  tenderness  and  attraction 
for  each  other. 

Arthur  Dimmesdale  is  ordinarily  considered  the 
figure  of  primary  importance,  and,  so  far  as  the 
external  evolution  of  the  story  is  concerned,  un 
questionably  he  is.  His,  apparently,  is  the  main 
tragic  problem,  and  his  is  the  solution  of  it.  Un 
doubtedly,  also,  we  are  admitted  from  first  to  last 
very  much  more  fully  into  his  consciousness  than 
into  Hester's.  While  she  remains  for  the  most  part 
in  isolation  with  her  enigmatic  child,  he  is  defined 
by  his  relations  to  the  elder  clergyman  and  the  offi 
cials  of  the  colony  in  that  superbly  ironical  scene 


HAWTHORNE  147 

in  which  Governor  Bellingham  says :  "Good  Master 
Dimmesdale,  the  responsibility  of  this  woman's  soul 
lies  greatly  with  you.  It  behooves  you,  therefore, 
to  exhort  her  to  repentance,  and  to  confession,  as 
a  proof  and  consequence  thereof."  He  is  defined 
by  his  peculiarly  excruciating  relations  with  Roger 
Chillingworth,  a  creature  of  somewhat  uncertain 
significance  even  to  his  creator,  who  sometimes  in 
vites  us  to  think  of  him  as  the  devil  incarnate,  some 
times  as  an  avenging  fury,  sometimes  as  the  Puritan 
conscience,  but  never  as  merely  a  wronged  husband. 
He  is  defined  by  his  relations  to  a  series  of  his 
parishioners  in  the  great  temptation  scene  of  the 
twentieth  chapter,  where  the  baser  elements  of  his 
nature  are  exhibited  in  riot  and  all  but  victorious. 
He  is  defined  by  the  passionate  exaltation  of  his 
Election  Sermon  and  by  his  last  words  on  the  scaf 
fold.  His  is  the  character  that  is  most  adequately 
realized  and  presented  and  that  affects  us  as  most 
unquestionably  human.  And  yet  when  all  is  said 
and  done,  he  does  not  become  an  individual;  he 
remains  a  type.  The  forms  of  his  temptation,  sin, 
suffering,  struggle,  and  aspiration  are  all  strictly  de 
termined  for  him  by  the  pressure  of  Puritan  society 
and  his  clerical  profession.  Our  special  interest  in 
him  is  due  not  to  any  noteworthy  differentiation  of 
his  character  but  to  the  tremendous  irony  of  his 
situation. 

In  Hester,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  manifest  that 
Hawthorne  intended  to  present  an  individual.     She 


148  AMERICANS 

is  differentiated  by  her  rich  dark  beauty,  her  volup 
tuous  Oriental  taste  for  the  gorgeously  beautiful, 
and  by  her  aspect,  when  she  is  flushed  with  momen 
tary  joy,  of  a  heroine  of  romance.  But  her  most 
interesting  distinction  is  her  moral  independence 
and  originality.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  though  her 
punishment  causes  her  shame  and  suffering,  it  does 
not  appear  to  bring  her  to  any  clear  state  of  con 
trition  or  repentance.  She  feels  that  society  by 
making  her  an  outcast  has  severed  her  obligation 
to  it.  For  it,  she  exists  only  as  a  terrible  example. 
For  herself,  she  is  a  free  spirit  liberated  in  a  moral 
wilderness  with  her  own  way  to  make  and  take. 
In  these  circumstances  her  thinking  has  little  refer 
ence  to  the  doctrines  expounded  in  the  meeting 
house.  She  thinks  as  her  heart  prompts;  and  her 
heart  tells  her  that  Arthur  Dimmesdale  is  still  her 
supreme  good,  and  devotion  to  him  her  highest 
duty.  The  world's  frown  she  had  endured  and  the 
frown  of  heaven;  "but  the  frown  of  this  pale,  weak, 
sinful,  and  sorrow-stricken  man  was  what  Hester 
could  not  bear  and  live  I"  To  save  him  she  had 
borne  in  silence  the  burden  of  her  knowledge  of 
Roger  Chillingworth's  presence.  To  redeem  him 
from  misery  she  is  ready  to  flee  with  him  to  other 
lands.  Though  in  the  years  of  her  exile  she  had 
quietly  conformed  to  the  external  regulations  of 
society,  "the  world's  law,"  says  her  historian,  "was 
no  law  for  her  mind."  Her  readiness  to  leave  the 
colony  with  the  minister,  Hawthorne  desires  us  to 


HAWTHORNE  149 

understand,  was  no  mere  impulse  of  unreflecting 
emotion.  It  was  due  to  her  vision  of  the  possibility 
of  reconstructing  their  shattered  lives,  and  this 
vision  in  turn  was  the  consequence  of  her  internal 
emancipation  from  the  power  of  the  Puritan  system 
of  ideas:  "She  assumed  a  freedom  of  speculation, 
then  common  enough  on  the  other  side  of  the  At 
lantic,  but  which  our  forefathers,  had  they  known 
it,  would  have  held  to  be  a  deadlier  crime  than  that 
stigmatized  by  the  scarlet  letter.  In  her  lonesome 
cottage,  by  the  seashore,  thoughts  visited  her,  such 
as  dared  to  enter  no  other  dwelling  in  New  Eng 
land;  shadowy  guests,  that  would  have  been  as 
perilous  as  demons  to  their  entertainer,  could  they 
have  been  seen  so  much  as  knocking  at  her  door." 
This  free  speculative  impulse  in  Hester,  her  reach 
ing  out  for  "spiritual  laws"  not  generally  recognized 
by  the  society  of  her  time,  makes  her  a  Transcen- 
dentalist  before  the  appointed  hour. 

In  the  forest  scene  Hawthorne  represents  Nature 
as  in  mysterious  and  joyous  sympathy  with  the  bliss 
of  the  lovers  in  their  vision  of  a  new  life  together. 
That  he  does  not  accept  Nature  as  moral  oracle, 
however,  he  indicates  by  an  emphatic  parenthesis — 
"that  wild,  heathen  Nature  of  the  forest,  never  sub 
jugated  by  human  law,  nor  illumined  by  higher 
truth."  On  the  other  hand,  his  giving  the  solution 
of  the  problem  to  Arthur  Dimmesdale  does  not 
prove  by  any  means  that  his  sympathies  were  wholly 
on  the  side  of  the  Puritans.  His  comment  upon  the 


ISO  AMERICANS 

two  possibilities  of  escape  from  the  predicament  in 
which  he  has  placed  his  hero  and  heroine  is  more 
subtle  than  is  ordinarily  noticed.  What  he  has 
made  clear  is,  that  for  the  minister,  who  at  the  end 
is  as  thoroughly  dominated  by  Puritan  forms  of 
thought  as  at  the  beginning,  confession  was  fated 
and  inevitable.  For  him  Hester's  solution  would 
have  involved  the  repetition  of  a  deadly  sin.  His 
temporary  decision  to  flee  with  her  is  therefore  con 
sistently  represented  as  filling  his  mind  with  per 
verse  suggestions  of  evil.  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  we 
may  be  sure,  was  happier  dying  on  the  scaffold  than 
he  would  have  been  sailing  to  Europe. 

It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that  the  devilish 
persecution  which  afflicts  him  does  not  touch  Hes 
ter.  Nor  is  she  exhibited  as  participating  in  the 
ecstasy  of  his  confession.  To  his  question,  "Is  not 
this  better  than  what  we  dreamed  of  in  the  for 
est?"  she  only  murmurs,  "I  know  not!  I  know 
not!"  And  her  last  words  express  her  quite  heretical 
hope  of  union  with  the  minister  in  another  world. 
She  believes  that  in  her  seven  years  of  suffering 
she  has  made  amends  to  heaven  for  her  wrong 
doing.  With  the  lapse  of  time  even  her  rigorous 
fellow-townsmen  relent,  take  her  again  into  their 
affections,  and  even  turn  to  her  for  counsel  "in  the 
continually  recurring  trials  of  wounded,  wasted, 
wronged,  misplaced,  or  erring  and  sinful  passion." 
Hawthorne,  while  remarking  that  she  often  thinks 
amiss,  obviously  admires  the  natural  desire  of  her 


HAWTHORNE  151 

rich  warm  nature  to  regain  a  place  of  usefulness 
and  happiness  in  society.  In  the  conclusion, 
furthermore,  he  intimates  pointedly  enough  that  the 
Puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  not  re 
ceived  the  final  word  on  the  regulation  of  human 
relationships;  that,  when  the  world  is  ripe  for 
it,  there  will  be  a  "higher  law"  declared,  a  new 
revelation,  "showing  how  sacred  love  should  make 
us  happy,  by  the  truest  test  of  a  life  successful  to 
such  an  end!" 

In  his  preface  to  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables 
Hawthorne  deprecates  attempts  to  "impale  the 
story  with  its  moral,  as  with  an  iron  rod."  "A  high 
truth,"  he  declares,  "fairly,  finely,  and  skilfully 
wrought  out,  brightening  at  every  step,  and  crown 
ing  the  final  development  of  a  work  of  fiction,  may 
add  an  artistic  glory,  but  is  never  truer,  and  seldom 
more  evident,  at  the  last  page  than  at  the  first." 
In  the  face  of  this  caution  it  would  be  imprudent 
to  speak  directly  of  the  moral  intentions  wrought 
into  the  fabric  of  The  Scarlet  Letter.  It  may  be 
permissible,  however,  to  call  attention  to  the  singu 
lar  union  of  judgment  with  compassion  which  char 
acterizes  Hawthorne's  treatment  of  his  principal 
personages,  and  which  he  also  solicits  for  them 
from  the  reader.  He  solicits  compassion  in  this 
romance,  as  in  the  little  tale  of  "The  Minister  with 
the  Black  Veil,"  by  perpetually  suggesting  to  the 
reader  that  search  in  his  own  heart  would  discover 
at  lea.st  the  seeds  and  latent  possibilities  of  kindred 


152  AMERICANS 

tragic  guilt.  He  solicits  judgment  on  the  ground 
which  the  most  gentle-spirited  Transcendentalist 
may  take,  and  so  save  himself  from  dissolution  in 
sympathy,  namely,  that  we  should  abide  firmly  by 
the  law  we  have  till  the  higher  law  is  ready.  The 
method  of  Hawthorne's  moral  appeal  is  the  method 
of  tragic  poetry:  the  image  of  anguish  that  never 
fades,  the  cadenced  cry  that,  like  the  despairing  wail 
of  Lady  Macbeth,  lingers  in  the  memory — "Is  there 
not  shade  enough  in  all  this  boundless  forest  to  hide 
thy  heart  from  the  gaze  of  Roger  Chillingworth  ?" 


VI 
WALT  WHITMAN 

Whitman  interests  and  disquiets  us  beyond  all 
other  American  poets  by  that  personality  of  his, 
so  original,  so  indolent  yet  intense,  so  fearlessly 
flaunted  yet  so  enigmatically  reserved,  so  palpably 
carnal  yet  so  illuminated  with  mystical  ardor  that  at 
the  first  bewildering  contact  one  questions  whether 
his  urgent  touch  is  of  lewdness  or  divinity.  There 
is  something  daimonic  in  the  effluence  of  the  man, 
which  visitors  remark  and  remember  months  and 
years  afterwards  as  an  impulse  unaccountably  affect 
ing  the  temper  of  their  lives.  It  is  a  sign  by  which 
one  recognizes  native  power  of  one  sort  or  another 
quite  above  talent.  Hawthorne  and  other  observers 
were  conscious  of  such  an  effluence  from  Whitman's 
master,  Emerson — "a  pure,  intellectual  gleam  dif 
fused  about  his  presence  like  the  garment  of  a  shin 
ing  one."  But  the  aura  of  the  disciple,  who  roved 
so  far  from  the  decorous  circle  of  the  Concord 
Platonist,  was,  I  fancy,  spiked  with  yellow  flame, 
like  the  gold-colored  nimbus  that  he  sought  to  paint 
above  the  heads  of  his  fellow  countrymen — "I  paint 

153 


154  AMERICANS 

many  heads :  but  I  paint  no  head  without  its  nimbus 
of  gold-colored  light."  "Something  a  little  more 
than  human,"  commented  Thoreau,  that  cool- 
blooded  New  Englander,  after  an  hour's  conver 
sation  with  the  bard.  Edward  Carpenter,  an  Eng 
lish  pilgrim  who  visited  him  in  1877,  says  that  in 
the  first  ten  minutes  he  became  conscious  "of  an  im 
pression  which  subsequently  grew  even  more  marked 
— the  impression,  namely,  of  immense  vista  or  back 
ground  in  his  personality."  As  to  the  final  quality 
of  Whitman's  personal  effluence  the  testimony  of 
John  Burroughs,  recorded  in  1878,  should  be  de 
cisive:  "After  the  test  of  time  nothing  goes  home 
like  the  test  of  actual  intimacy,  and  to  tell  me  that 
Whitman  is  not  a  large,  fine,  fresh  magnetic  per 
sonality,  making  you  love  him,  and  want  always  to 
be  with  him,  were  to  tell  me  that  my  whole  past 
life  is  a  deception,  and  all  the  perception  of  my 
impressions  a  fraud."  His  appeal  to  the  imagina 
tion  was  not  diminished  by  his  offering  to  the  eye. 
The  mere  physical  image  of  him  standing  against 
the  sky,  so  nonchalant  and  imperturbable  in  his 
workman's  shirt  and  trousers,  as  in  his  first  edition 
of  1855,  is,  or  was,  of  a  novel  and  compelling 
effrontery  in  the  smooth  gallery  of  our  national 
statuary.  Like  the  image  of  Franklin  at  Paris  in 
his  coonskin  cap,  the  image  of  Lincoln  as  the  rail- 
splitter,  or  of  Mark  Twain  as  the  Mississippi  pilot, 
or  of  Roosevelt  as  Rough  Rider,  so  the  image  of 


WALT  WHITMAN  155 

Walt  Whitman  as  the  carpenter  or  printer  turned 
bard  in  Manhattan  pleases  one's  taste  for  the 
autocthonous,  the  home-grown.  More  than  that,  it 
touches  the  heart  by  symbolizing  the  national  sense 
that,  after  all  our  civilizing  efforts,  we  live  still  in 
an  unfinished  world.  He  acquired  blandness  with 
the  years;  yet  even  in  his  mild  old  age  he  looked 
out  from  under  his  wide-brimmed  hat  and  from  the 
cloudy  covert  of  beard  and  hair  with  no  academic 
mien — rather  with  the  untamed  and  heroic  aspect  of 

Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old. 

On  the  centenaries  of  most  of  the  American  poets 
who  flourished  at  the  time  when  the  Leaves  of 
Grass  was  first  put  forth,  we  enquire  rather  coldly 
and  incuriously  what  is  left  of  them.  They  have 
sadly  dwindled — most  of  them — they  have  lost 
their  warmth  for  us,  they  have  become  irrelevant 
to  our  occasions.  Whitman  still  with  astonishing 
completeness  lives.  He  lives  because  hr  marvel- 
ously  well  identified  that  daimonic  personality  with 
his  book,  so  that  whoever  touches  it,  as  he  himself 
declared,  touches  a  man,  and  a  man  of  singularly 
intense  perceptiveness.  One  can  hardly  exaggerate 
the  potency  of  Whitman's  imaginative  process — a 
process  easier  to  illustrate  than  to  define.  Let  us 
take,  for  example,  these  lines  on  the  fugitive  slave 
and  consider  the  almost  intolerable  immediacy 
of  the  presentment: 


156  AMERICANS 

The  hounded  slave  that  flags  in  the  race,  leans  by 

the  fence,  blowing,  cover'd  with  sweat, 
The  twinges  that  sting  like  needles  his  legs  and  neck, 

the  murderous  buckshot  and  the  bullets — 
All  these  I  feel  or  am. 
I  am  the  hounded  slave,  I  wince  at  the  bite  of  the 

dogs; 
Hell  and  despair  are  upon  me,  crack  and  again 

crack  the  marksman; 
I  clutch  the  rails  of  the  fence,  my  gore  dribs,  thinn'd 

with  the  ooze  of  my  skin; 
I  fall  on  the  weeds  and  stones. 
The  riders  spur  their  unwilling  horses,  haul  close, 
Taunt  my  dizzy  ears  and  beat  me  violently  over  the 

head  with  whip  stocks. 

Agonies  are  one  of  my  changes  of  garments. 
I  do  not  ask  the  wounded  person  how  he  feels;  I 

myself  become  the  wounded  person; 
My  hurts  turn  livid  upon  me  as  I  lean  on  a  cane 

and  observe. 

This  is  the  method  of  Whitman:  imaginative 
contemplation  of  the  object,  which  identifies  him 
with  the  object.  It  does  not  suggest  comparison 
with  the  method  of  Longfellow  or  of  Tennyson.  It 
reminds  one  rather  of  the  imaginative  contempla 
tion  practised  by  mediaeval  saints,  which  brought 
out  in  hands  and  brow  the  marks  of  the  Crucifixion. 
The  vitality  and  validity  of  Whitman's  report  is  not 
that  of  an  experience  observed  but  rather  that  of 
an  experience  repeated. 

But  Whitman  lives  for  another  reason  which  is 
worth  dwelling  upon  for  the  sake  of  young  poets 


WALT  WHITMAN  157 

eager  for  immortality.  He  lives  because  of  the 
richness  of  his  vital  reference,  the  fulness  of  the 
relations  which  he  established  between  his  book  and 
the  living  world.  There  is  a  sect  of  poets  to-day, 
with  attendant  critics,  who  expect  to  outlast  their 
age  by  shunning  contact  with  its  hopes  and  fears, 
by  avoiding  commitments  and  allegiances,  and  by 
confining  themselves  to  decorating  the  interior  of 
an  ivory  tower  in  the  style  of  Kubla  Khan.  Whit 
man  made  his  bid  for  perpetuity  on  another  basis. 
He  identified  himself  and  his  chants  with  innumer 
able  things  that  are  precious  and  deathless — with 
his  wide-extended  land  and  the  unending  miracles 
of  the  seasons,  with  the  independence  and  union  and 
destiny  of  "These  States,"  with  common  people  and 
heroes,  their  proud  memories,  their  limitless  aspi 
ration,  and  with  the  sunlight  and  starlight  of  the 
over-arching  heaven.  Committing  himself  to  demo 
cratic  America,  he  surrendered  with  "immitigable 
adoration"  to  a  spirit  that  preserved  and  magnified 
him  with  its  own  unfolding  greatness.  And  so  as 
the  seasons  return,  he  returns  with  the  spring  and 
the  musical  winds  and  tides  that  play  about  his  be 
loved  Mannahatta,  with  the  subtle  odor  of  lilacs  in 
the  dooryard,  with  valor  and  suffering  and  victory, 
with  the  thoughts  and  words  that  perennially  conse 
crate  the  old  battlefield  at  Gettysburg,  with  the 
young  men  returning  from  the  latest  "great  war," 
with  civil  labor  resumed  and  civil  comradeship,  with 
furled  flags  and  May-time  and  hopes  recurrent.  He 


158  AMERICANS 

returns;  and  if  we  wish  to  salute  him,  he  will  give 
us  the  tune: 

Again  old  heart  so  gay,  again  to  you,  your  sense, 

the  full  flush  spring  returning; 
Again  the  freshness  and  the  odors,  again  Virginia's 

summer  sky,  pellucid  blue  and  silver; 
Again  the  forenoon  purple  of  the  hills; 
Again  the  deathless  grass,   so  noiseless,   soft  and 

green, 
Again  the  blood-red  roses  blooming. 

But  why  is  this  interesting  and  vital  personality 
important  to  us?  Open  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  and 
you  will  find  this  piquantly  intimate  answer:  "I  con 
sidered  long  and  seriously  of  you  before  you  were 
born."  Other  poets  have  given  little  thought  to  us, 
and  we,  in  compensation,  give  little  thought  to 
them;  for  we  modern  men  and  women  of  realistic 
temper  go  not  to  literature  to  escape  from  life, 
but  to  intensify  our  sense  of  it  and  to  find  a  spirit 
that  will  animate  us  in  the  thick  of  it.  Whitman, 
proclaimer  of  egotism,  foresaw  our  intentness  upon 
our  own  enterprises,  and  prepared  for  the  day  when 
we  should  demand  of  him:  "What  have  you  said, 
Poet,  that  concerns  us?"  Though  he  is  saturated 
with  historical  and  contemporary  references,  noth 
ing  in  him  is  merely  contemporary,  merely  histori 
cal.  He  gathers  up  ages,  literatures,  philosophies, 
and  consumes  them  as  the  food  of  passion  and 
prophecy.  He  strides  with  the  energy  and  momen 
tum  of  the  national  past  into  the  national  future, 


WALT  WHITMAN  159 

towering  above  a  poetical  movement  which  he  has 
fathered,  scattering  social  and  political  and  religious 
gospels,  with  troops  of  disciples  and  unbelievers  in 
this  and  other  lands,  crying  still  proudly  as  of  old: 
"All  that  I  have  said  concerns  you."  He  is  impor 
tant,  because  he  recognized  that,  though  there  are 
many  ways  by  which  a  man  can  attract  attention 
and  get  a  temporary  hearing,  there  is  only  one  way 
by  which  he  can  permanently  interest  and  attach 
the  affections  of  the  American  people  and  so  hold 
a  place  among  the  great  Americans :  that  is  by  help 
ing  them  unfold  the  meanings,  fulfil  the  promises, 
and  justify  the  faith  of  democratic  society. 

By  making  himself  important  to  the  American 
people  as  the  poetic  interpreter  of  their  political  and 
social  ideals,  Whitman,  as  things  are  turning  out, 
finds  himself  now  mid-stream  in  the  democratic 
movement  which  encompasses  the  earth.  At  the 
present  time  it  is  manifest  that,  in  spite  of  obstacles 
and  cross-currents,  the  central  current  of  the  world 
is  making  towards  democracy.  Whatever  else  it 
involves,  democracy  involves  at  least  one  grand 
salutary  elementary  admission,  namely,  that  the 
world  exists  for  the  benefit  and  for  the  improve 
ment  of  all  the  decent  individuals  in  it.  Till  re 
cently  this  admission  in  many  quarters  had  never 
been  made,  had  been  savagely  opposed.  It  is  cov 
ertly,  secretly,  indirectly  opposed  in  many  quarters 
of  our  own  country  even  to-day.  Now  the  indica 
tions  are  that  those  who  opposite  it  are  going  to 


160  AMERICANS 

be  outnumbered  and  overwhelmed.  The  movement 
is  on,  and  it  will  not  be  stopped.  Wise  men,  ambi 
tious  men,  far-sighted  men  will  not  attempt  to  block 
it.  They  will  adapt  themselves  to  it,  they  will  co 
operate  with  it,  they  will  direct  and  further  it  as 
the  only  way  in  which  they  may  hope  to  be  of  any 
cheerful  significance  in  the  era  opening  before  them. 
The  "ruling  class,"  the  statesmen,  in  all  nations 
will  find  their  mission  and  their  honor  progressively 
dependent  upon  their  capacity  for  bringing  the  en 
tire  body  of  humanity  into  one  harmonious  and 
satisfactory  life. 

Now  the  supreme  power  of  Whitman  consists  in 
this:  that  his  spirit  works  inwardly,  like  religion, 
upon  other  spirits,  quickening  and  preparing  them 
for  this  general  human  fellowship,  this  world  soci 
ety,  which  to  him,  as  to  many  of  his  great  prede 
cessors,  appeared  to  be  the  legitimate  far-off  conse 
quence  of  the  principles  declared  by  the  American 
fathers.  "Cosmopolitanism"  has  of  late  suffered 
many  indignities  as  a  word  and  as  a  conception; 
and  those  who  speak  of  an  international  society  are 
readily  charged  with  treasonable  and  anarchical  in 
novation.  In  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  word  no 
aspiration  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  more  thoroughly 
American  and  traditional  than  cosmopolitanism. 
"God  grant,"  exclaimed  Franklin,  "that  not  only 
the  love  of  liberty  but  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
rights  of  man  may  pervade  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth,  so  that  a  philosopher  may  set  his  foot  any- 


WALT  WHITMAN  161 

where  on  its  surface  and  say,  'This  is  my  country.' ' 
By  statesmen  like  Washington,  Jefferson,  John 
Quincy  Adams,  or  Lincoln  this  utterance  would  have 
been  accepted  as  suggesting  the  ultimate  fruition  of 
the  highest  statecraft.  The  diffusion  of  a  spirit 
among  men  which  will  support  and  make  possible 
such  statecraft  appeared  to  writers  like  Emerson 
and  Whitman  as  perhaps  the  central  function  of  the 
serious  man  of  letters. 

"I  hate  literature,"  said  Whitman,  conversing  in 
Camden  with  colloquial  over-emphasis.  What  he 
meant  was  that  he  rejected  the  famous  "play- 
theory"  of  art  and  looked  with  disdain  upon  belles- 
lettres  in  their  merely  recreative  and  decorative 
aspects.  "Literature  is  big,"  he  explained  on  an 
other  occasion,  "only  in  one  way — when  used  as  an 
aid  in  the  growth  of  the  humanities — a  furthering 
of  the  cause  of  the  masses — a  means  whereby  men 
may  be  revealed  to  each  other  as  brothers."  Recog 
nizing  that  "the  real  work  of  democracy  is  done 
underneath  its  politics,"  Whitman  conceived  of  his 
mission  from  first  to  last  as  moral  and  spiritual; 
and  nothing  could  be  sillier  than  the  current  criti 
cism  which  derides  a  sense  of  mission  in  the  poet 
and  at  the  same  time  proudly  salutes  Whitman  as 
the  chief  American  poet.  It  is  as  if  one  should 
say,  "I  am  very  fond  of  walnuts,  but  I  don't  like 
the  meats."  Not  a  part  but  the  whole  of  his  life- 
work  is  permeated  with  religious  and  moral  inten 
tion.  What  gives  to  the  Leaves  of  Grass  its  cumu- 


162  AMERICANS 

lative  effect  is  its  many-sided  development  of  a  single 
theme,  of  which  I  shall  give  one  more  of  his  con 
versational  descriptions:  "I  am  for  getting  all  the 
walls  down — all  of  them.  .  .  .  While  I  seem  to 
love  America,  and  wish  to  see  America  prosperous, 
I  do  not  seem  able  to  bring  myself  to  love  America, 
to  desire  American  prosperity,  at  the  expense  of 
some  other  nation."  "But  must  we  not  take  care 
of  home  first  of  all?"  asked  Dudley.  "Perhaps," 
replied  Whitman,  "but  what  is  home — to  the  hu 
manitarian  what  is  home?" 

It  is  easy  and  natural  to  disparage  this  diffusive 
humanitarian  sentiment  as  it  is  to  ignore  that  diffi 
cult  central  precept  of  Christianity  which  prescribes 
one's  feeling  towards  one's  neighbor.  Every  one 
knows,  for  example,  Roosevelt's  scornful  compari 
son  of  the  man  who  loves  his  own  country  no  better 
than  another  to  the  man  who  loves  his  own  wife  no 
better  than  another.  Roosevelt,  who  had  a  great 
talent  for  bringing  forward  and  glorifying  the  sim 
ple  elementary  passions,  has  had  his  share  of  ap 
plause.  When  the  applause  dies  away  and  reflection 
begins,  it  occurs  to  some  of  us  that  the  simple 
elementary  passions  pretty  well  look  after  them 
selves.  No  very  rare  talent  is  required  to  commend 
to  the  average  man  the  simple  elementary  passions. 
He  takes  to  them  by  a  primitive  urge  of  his  being 
as  the  bull  moose  takes  to  fighting  and  mating.  Na 
ture  has  given  them  a  vigor  and  hardiness  which 


WALT  WHITMAN  163 

provides  against  their  extinction.  Meanwhile  our 
societies,  national  and  international,  do  not  run  as 
smoothly  and  efficiently  as  men  who  hate  waste  and 
confusion  desire.  They  seem  to  clamor  from  their 
discordant  and  jarring  gear  for  some  motive  and 
regulative  power  other  than  the  simple  elementary 
passions.  What  nature  has  overlooked  and  neg 
lected  or  inadequately  attended  to  is  the  develop 
ment  of  those  feelings  which  fit  men  to  live  har 
moniously  in  complex  civil  societies.  So  that  the 
special  task  for  those  who  would  ameliorate  our 
modern  world  is  to  bring  forward  and  glorify  an 
order  of  emotions  quite  unknown  to  the  Cave  Man 
— a  mutual  understanding  and  imaginative  sympa 
thy  which  begin  to  develop  and  operate  only  when 
the  elementary  urges  of  our  nature  have  been 
checked  and  subdued  by  a  reflective  culture.  Over 
most  of  the  once-called  great  statesmen  of  Whit 
man's  period  and  of  our  own  generation — the  Bis- 
marcks,  the  Disraelis,  the  Roosevelts — there  falls 
the  shadow  of  great  tasks  from  which  they  shrank 
and  the  darker  and  still  present  shadow  of  a  great 
calamity  which  their  fostering  of  the  elementary 
passions  helped  to  bring  upon  us.  In  the  present 
posture  of  the  world  I  think  we  should  not  scorn 
so  resolute  a  patriot  as  Whitman,  who  had  lived 
through  two  or  three  wars,  for  confessing  the 
growth  in  himself  and  for  promoting  the  growth 
in  others  of  a  sense  like  this: 


164  AMERICANS 

This  moment  yearning  and  thoughtful  sitting  alone, 
It  seems  to  me  there  are  other  men  in  other  lands 

yearning  and  thoughtful; 
It  seems  to  me  I  can  look  over  and  behold  them  in 

Germany,  Italy,  France,  Spain, 
Or  far,  far  away  in  China,  or  in  Russia  or  Japan, 

talking  other  dialects. 
And  it  seems  to  me  if  I  could  know  these  men  I 

should  become  attached  to  them  as  I  do  to  men 

in  my  own  lands. 

0  I  know  we  should  be  brethren  and  lovers ; 

1  know  I  should  be  happy  with  them. 

There  is  at  least  an  appearance  of  inconsistency 
between  this  limitless  humanitarian  sympathy  of 
Whitman's  and  his  enthusiastic  nationalism.  There 
is  at  least  an  appearance  of  inconsistency  between 
his  enthusiastic  nationalism  and  his  resolute  indi 
vidualism.  But  let  us  not  forget  the  appearance 
of  fundamental  conflict  between  the  multitude  of 
the  heavenly  host  crying  peace  on  earth  and  the 
words  of  him  they  heralded  saying,  "I  came  not 
to  bring  peace  but  a  sword."  The  exploration  of 
the  ground  between  these  opposites,  the  reconcilia 
tion  of  jarring  antinomies,  is  a  task  from  which 
statesmen  shrink.  It  is  precisely  the  master  task 
of  the  poetic  and  religious  imagination.  Whitman, 
as  the  opening  lines  of  his  book  declare,  recognized 
it  as  the  very  heart  of  his  theme : 

One's-Self  I  sing — a  simple,  separate  Person; 

Yet  utter  the  word  Democratic,  the  word  En-masse. 

There  is  the  mystery  which  enchanted  him  and 


WALT  WHITMAN  165 

which  perplexes  us  still — the  mystery  of  the  co 
existence  of  personal  freedom  with  social  authority. 
He  believed  in  both,  just  as  for  centuries  men  have 
believed  in  the  coexistence  of  free-will  with  fore 
knowledge  absolute.  No  one  has  a  right  to  call 
his  reconciliation  of  the  individual  with  society  in 
adequate  who  has  not  taken  the  trouble  to  hear  the 
whole  of  his  song  and  its  commentaries  in  "Demo 
cratic  Vistas"  and  "Specimen  Days" ;  for  part  sup 
ports  part,  and  the  whole  is  greater  than  the  sum 
of  them.  No  other  poet  exhibits  himself  so  inade 
quately  in  extracts.  One  gets  nearly  all  of  Gray  in 
the  "Elegy" ;  but  one  can  no  more  get  all  of  Whit 
man  in  "O  Captain!  My  Captain"  than  one  can  get 
all  of  a  modern  symphony  in  the  sound  of  the  flutes 
or  oboes.  Whitman  is  not  primarily  a  melodist. 
His  strength  is  in  the  rich  interweaving  of  intricate 
and  difficult  harmonies. 

In  the  life-long  evolution  of  his  work,  he  was 
seeking  a  concord  of  soul  and  body,  individual  and 
society,  state  and  nation,  nation  and  the  family  of 
nations,  some  grand  chord  to  unite  the  dominant 
notes  of  all.  In  his  quest  for  this  harmony  he 
clothes  himself  in  his  country  as  in  a  garment;  he 
becomes  America  feeling  out  her  relations  with  the 
world.  I  seem  to  distinguish  in  his  poems  three 
great  successive  movements  or  impulses  correspond 
ing  roughly  to  the  three  periods  of  the  national  life 
in  which  he  had  his  being.  The  first  is  a  movement 
of  individualistic  expansion  corresponding  to  the 


166  AMERICANS 

period  before  the  Civil  War.  The  second  is  a  move 
ment  of  concentration  corresponding  to  the  period 
of  the  war.  The  third  is  a  resumed  movement  of 
"individualistic"  expansion  following  the  war,  and 
spiritualized  by  it." 

It  can  hardly  be  too  much  emphasized  that  Whit 
man  and  America  went  through  their  adolescence 
together  and  that  the  arrogance  of  his  advent  in 
poetry  matches  the  defiant  attitude  of  the  young 
republic.  Born  at  West  Hills,  Long  Island,  May 
31,  1819,  Walt  Whitman  had  a  lively  consciousness 
of  his  inheritance  from  the  French  and  American 
revolutions.  In  his  boyhood  he  had  actually  been 
touched  by  Lafayette.  He  knew  an  old  friend  of 
Tom  Paine's.  His  own  father,  though  an  unedu 
cated  man,  had  caught  the  free-thinking  habit  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  As  he  grew  towards  man 
hood,  he  felt  stirring  around  him  that  intoxicating 
welter  of  radical  enthusiasms  and  rosy  idealisms 
which  in  the  forties  and  fifties  was  loosely  described 
as  Transcendentalism,  and  which  remains  to  this 
day  the  most  variously  fascinating  and  fragrant 
blossoming  of  mind  that  America  has  exhibited.  It 
was  a  delighted  movement  of  emancipation  from 
the  old  world  and  her  unholy  alliances.  It  was  still 
more  a  resolute  affirmation  of  faith  in  the  new  world 
and  her  unexplored  possibilities — faith  in  the  re 
sources  of  nature  and  the  capacity  of  man  to  appro 
priate  them.  Inspiriting  voices  were  in  the  air,  and 
every  voice  cried  in  one  fashion  or  another:  "Trust 


WALT  WHITMAN  167 

thyself;  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string. 
Acccept  the  place  the  divine  Providence  has  found 
for  you;  the  society  of  your  contemporaries,  the 
connexion  of  events.  Great  men  have  always  done 
so  and  confided  themselves  childlike  to  the  genius 
of  their  age,  betraying  their  perception  that  the 
Eternal  was  stirring  at  their  heart,  working  through 
their  hands,  predominating  in  all  their  being." 

In  his  roving  early  days  as  teacher,  printer,  edi 
tor;  reading  his  Dante  and  Shakespeare  in  a  wood 
by  the  sea;  visiting  New  Orleans  and  wandering 
home  again  by  the  Mississippi  and  the  Great  Lakes, 
Whitman  heard  these  voices  of  his  age  pealing  in 
his  ear  with  an  ever  more  imperative  summons, 
"Trust  thyself."  And  Whitman  resolved  to  trust 
himself,  soul  and  body,  and  to  trust  his  time  and 
place,  and  to  commit  himself  for  better  or  for  worse 
to  the  society  of  his  contemporaries  and  the  spiritual 
current  flowing  beneath  American  events.  There 
has  been  much  discussion  of  Whitman's  indebted 
ness  at  this  point  to  the  inspiration  of  Emerson. 
It  seems  clear  on  the  one  hand  that  Whitman  sent 
a  copy  of  his  edition  of  1855  to  Emerson;  that  in 
his  edition  of  1856  he  printed  Emerson's  letter  of 
acknowledgment  and  spoke  of  him  as  "friend  and 
master";  and  that  in  the  conversations  of  his  later 
years  with  Traubel  he  repeatedly  talked  of  Emer 
son  with  admiration  and  reverence.  It  is  clear,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  Emerson  looked  upon  Whit 
man  as  a  representative  of  the  new  America,  for 


168  AMERICANS 

whom  he  had  in  some  sense  prepared  the  way,  and 
that  on  July  21,  1855,  he  wrote  to  the  then  almost 
unknown  poet  the  following  memorable  letter: 

DEAR  SIR:  I  am  not  blind  to  the  worth  of  the 
wonderful  gift  of  Leaves  of  Grass.  I  find  it  the 
most  extraordinary  piece  of  wit  and  wisdom  that 
America  has  yet  contributed.  I  am  very  happy  in 
reading  it,  as  great  power  makes  us  happy.  It  meets 
the  demand  I  am  always  making  of  what  seems  the 
sterile  and  stingy  Nature,  as  if  too  much  handiwork 
or  too  much  lymph  in  the  temperament  were  making 
our  Western  wits  fat  and  mean.  I  give  you  joy  of 
your  free  and  brave  thought.  I  have  great  joy  in 
it.  I  find  incomparable  things,  said  incomparably 
well,  as  they  must  be.  I  find  the  courage  of  treat 
ment  which  so  delights  us,  and  which  large  percep 
tion  only  can  inspire. 

I,  greet  you  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  career, 
which  yet  must  have  had  a  long  foreground,  for 
such  a  start.  I  rubbed  my  eyes  a  little  to  see  if  this 
sunbeam  were  no  illusion;  but  the  solid  sense  of  the 
book  is  a  sober  certainty.  It  has  the  best  merits, 
namely,  of  fortifying  and  encouraging. 

I  did  not  know,  until  I  last  night  saw  the  book 
advertised  in  a  newspaper,  that  I  could  trust  the 
name  as  real  and  available  for  a  post-office. 

I  wish  to  see  my  benefactor,  and  have  felt  much 
like  striking  my  tasks,  and  visiting  New  York  to 
pay  you  my  respects. 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

Now  Whitman's  "free  and  brave  thought,"  his 
determination  to  trust  himself,  body  and  soul,  im 
pelled  him  in  the  first  gush  of  his  self-expression  to 


WALT  WHITMAN  169 

glorify  his  earthy  and  instinctive  impulses  with  a 
flamboyance  which  Emerson  and  many  other  critics 
were  to  condemn  as  distasteful,  shocking,  or  even 
dangerous.  The  powerful  virtue  in  the  chants  be 
fore  the  war,  the  virtue  for  the  sake  of  which  Emer 
son  overlooked  whatever  in  them  he  distasted,  was 
their  "fortifying  and  encouraging"  individualism. 
It  is  an  individualism  of  adolescent  America,  un 
checked  by  political  experience,  modified  and  colored 
by  emotional  attachments  to  the  American  scene 
and  the  American  actors.  It  is  such  a  passion  as 
made  such  an  indigenous  individual  as  Thoreau  love 
Walden  Pond  and  refuse  to  pay  his  taxes.  It  is  an 
individualism  further  tempered,  however,  from  the 
first  by  a  profound  sense  of  the  general  human 
brotherhood  and  a  hatred  of  unearned  special  privi 
lege.  Heir  of  the  Revolutionary  Era,  Whitman  is 
an  equalitarian  of  a  sort.  "By  God,"  he  exclaims, 
"I  will  accept  nothing  which  all  cannot  have  their 
counterpart  of  on  the  same  terms."  But  for  bring 
ing  in  the  reign  of  Equality  he  confides  in  men  rather 
than  in  political  mechanisms.  "Produce,"  he  as 
serts,  "Produce  great  persons,  the  rest  follows." 
He  is  the  Declaration  of  Independence  incarnate. 
He  desires  followers  but  only  such  as  are  moved 
by  inner  impulse;  he  will  not  have  clubs  studying 
him  nor  "schools"  trooping  after  him.  Markedly 
like  Emerson  and  Thoreau  in  this  respect,  he  is 
wary  of  organizations  which  prescribe  the  conduct 
of  the  individual  and  relieve  him  of  his  personal 


170  AMERICANS 

danger  and  responsibility.  He  will  stand  or  fall  in 
his  own  strength.  He  is  wary  of  organized  major 
ities.  Almost  in  the  spirit  of  Washington  he  warns 
against  the  savageness  and  wolfishness  of  parties, 
so  combative,  so  intolerant  of  the  idea  of  equal 
brotherhood  and  the  interests  of  all.  "It  behooves 
you,"  he  declared,  "to  convey  yourself  implicitly  to 
no  party,  nor  submit  blindly  to  their  dictators,  but 
steadily  hold  yourself  judge  and  master  over  all 
of  them."  "I  am  a  radical  of  radicals,"  he  repeats 
from  youth  to  grey  old  age.  Beside  this  utterance 
one  should  place  his  golden  words  to  his  biographer 
Traubel:  "Be  radical;  be  radical;  be  not  too 
damned  radical."  Despite  such  cautionary  modifica 
tions,  however,  one  may  say  that  Whitman's  pri 
mary  impulse  is  one  of  revolt  against  whatever  de 
prives  the  simple  separate  person  of  his  right  to 
freedom  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 

But  the  second  movement  of  Whitman's  mind 
proves  him  a  far  more  complex  phenomenon  than 
most  of  the  critics  have  acknowledged.  Mr.  George 
Santayana  represents  him  as  a  kind  of  placid  animal 
wallowing  unreflectively  in  the  stream  of  his  own 
sensations.  This  view  of  him  may  indeed  be  sup 
ported  by  reference  to  certain  of  his  passages  which 
express  with  unwise  exuberance  his  delight  in  the 
reports  of  his  senses.  The  unwisdom  of  his  exuber 
ance  with  reference  to  the  sexual  life,  for  example, 
is  pretty  nearly  demonstrated  by  the  number  of 
critics  whose  critical  faculty  has  been  quite  upset 


WALT  WHITMAN  171 

by  it;  so  that  they  can  find  nothing  significant  in  this 
prophet  of  the  new  world  but  his  shamelessness. 
"Hold  off  from  sensuality,"  enjoined  Cicero  (who, 
by  the  way,  was  not  a  Victorian)  "for,  if  you  have 
given  yourself  up  to  it,  you  will  find  yourself  unable 
to  think  of  anything  else."  This  precept  rests  upon 
physiological  and  psychological  facts  which  Whit 
man's  experiments  in  heliotherapy  have  not  altered. 
To  put  a  serpent  in  a  show-window  does  not  blunt 
its  fangs.  But  to  represent  Whitman  as  exclusively 
or  finally  preoccupied  with  the  life  of  the  senses  is 
not  to  represent  him  whole.  It  is  to  ignore  a  fact 
which  flames  from  the  completed  Leaves  of  Grass, 
namely,  that  he  is  one  of  the  "twice-born" — that 
he  had  a  new  birth  in  the  spirit  of  the  Civil  War 
and  a  rebaptism  in  its  blood.  His  book  as  it  now 
stands  is  built  around  that  event,  and  the  martyred 
President  is  the  palpitating  heart  of  it.  That  Whit 
man  emerged  from  the  warm  shallows  of  his  in 
dividual  sensibility,  that  he  immersed  himself  in  the 
spiritual  undercurrents  of  the  national  life, — this 
significant  alteration  of  his  position  is  established 
by  his  conduct  and  temper  in  the  war. 

Through  the  long  agony  of  the  struggle,  Whit 
man  went  about  the  military  hospitals,  nursing  the 
sick  and  wounded  from  every  state  without  excep 
tion;  with  malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all, 
tenderly  compassionate  toward  Northerner  and 
Southerner  alike.  In  his  "Notes  of  a  Hospital 
Nurse"  he  records  his  affectionate  ministrations  to 


172  AMERICANS 

two  brothers  mortally  wounded  in  the  same  battle 
but  on  opposite  sides;  and  he  remarks  almost  as  if 
he  himself  were  a  neutral  above  the  conflict.  "Each 
died  for  his  cause."  The  accent  of  his  compassion 
recalls  the  perplexed  sadness  of  that  touching  pass 
age  in  the  Second  Inaugural  where  Lincoln  reflects 
that  "Both  read  the  same  Bible,  and  pray  to  the 
same  God;  and  each  invokes  his  aid  against  the 
other."  Almost  in  the  manner  of  an  outraged 
pacifist,  Whitman,  after  describing  an  attack  on  a 
hospital  train,  comments  as  follows:  "Multiply 
the  above  by  scores,  aye  hundreds — light  it  with 
every  lurid  passion,  the  wolf's,  the  lion's  lapping 
thirst  for  blood — the  passionate  boiling  volcanoes 
of  human  revenge  for  comrades,  brothers  slain — 
with  the  light  of  burning  farms,  and  heaps  of  smut 
ting,  smouldering  black  embers — and  in  the  human 
heart  everywhere  black,  worse  embers — and  you 
have  an  inkling  of  this  war."  Yet  despite  his  abhor 
rence  of  cruelty  and  despite  his  compassion  for  suf 
fering,  Whitman's  sympathy  does  not  blunt  the 
edge  of  his  judgment.  He  is  no  more  a  pacifist  or 
a  neutral  than  Lincoln  himself.  Though  his  eyes 
are  fixed  daily  on  the  dreadful  cost  of  his  moral 
and  political  faith,  he  remains  a  passionate  and  un 
relenting  Unionist.  Like  the  great  captain  whom 
he  was  to  salute  as  "the  sweetest,  wisest  soul  of  all 
my  days  and  lands,"  he  has  sunk  his  personal  sensi 
bilities  in  the  larger  and  more  precious  life  of  the 
nation.  Till  the  war  is  over  he  cries  with  full 


WALT  WHITMAN  173 

heart:  "Thunder  on!  stride  on,  Democracy!  Strike 
with  vengeful  stroke."  In  his  vision  of  the  indis 
pensable  One  encompassing  the  Many  he  salutes 
the  sacrificial  flag  with  an  out-flaming  national  loy 
alty  incomprehensible  to  the  conscientious  objector: 

Angry  cloth  I  saw  there  leaping  I 

I  stand  again  in  leaden  rain  your  flapping  folds 

saluting, 
I  sing  you  over  all,  flying  beckoning  through  the 

fight — O  the  hard-contested  fight! 
The  cannons  ope  their  rosy-flashing  muzzles — the 

hurtled  balls  scream, 
The  battle-front  forms  amid  the  smoke — the  volleys 

pour  incessant  from  the  line, 
Hark,  the  ringing  word  Charge!  now  the  tussle  and 

the  furious  maddening  yells, 
Now  the  corpses  tumble  curl'd  upon  the  ground, 
Cold,  cold  in  death,  for  precious  life  of  you, 
Angry  cloth  I  saw  their  leaping. 

In  the  era  of  reconstruction  after  the  war  Whit 
man  reconstructs  his  individualism  in  the  light  of 
his  allegiance  to  the  Union.  Musing  deeply  of 
"these  warlike  days  and  of  peace  return'd,  and 
the  dead  that  return  no  more,"  he  hears  a  phantom 
with  stern  visage  bidding  him  chant  the  poem  "that 
comes  from  the  soul  of  America,  chant  me  the  carol 
of  victory."  Brooding  once  again  upon  the  old 
mystery,  why  Lincoln  wished  to  preserve  the  Union, 
what  justified  those  rivers  of  fraternal  blood,  he 
bursts  into  this  explanation  of  the  ultimate  purpose 


174  AMERICANS 

of  a  modern  democratic  state,  and  offers  it,  as  will 
be  noted  at  the  end,  to  America  militant: 

I  swear  I  begin  to  see  the  meaning  of  these  things, 

It  is  not  the  earth,  it  is  not  America  who  is  great, 

It  is  I  who  am  great  or  to  be  great,  it  is  You  up 
there,  or  any  one, 

It  is  to  walk  rapidly  through  civilizations,  govern 
ments,  theories, 

Through  poems,  pageants,  shows,  to  form  indi 
viduals. 

Underneath  all,  individuals, 

I  swear  nothing  is  good  to  me  now  that  ignores 
individuals, 

The  American  compact  is  altogether  with  individ 
uals, 

The  only  government  is  that  which  makes  minute  of 
individuals, 

The  whole  theory  of  the  universe  is  directed  un 
erringly  to  one  single  individual — namely,  to 
You 

(Mother!  with  subtle  sense  severe,  with  the  naked 
sword  in  your  hand, 

I  saw  you  at  last  refuse  to  treat  but  directly  with 
individuals.) 

There  is  a  definition  of  purpose  which  cuts  into 
Treitschke's  cold-blooded  assertion  that  "the  indi 
vidual  has  no  right  to  regard  the  State  as  a  means 
for  attaining  his  own  ambitions  in  life."  And  it  cuts 
with  equal  keenness  into  the  conception  of  those 
younger  international,  revolutionary  statesmen  who, 
ignoring  individuals,  propose  to  deal  with  classes, 
legislate  for  one  class,  and  institute  world-wide 


WALT  WHITMAN  175 

class-war.  But  let  us  admit,  also,  that  it  strikes 
quite  as  deeply  into  the  pretensions  of  any  class 
whatsoever,  which  governing  in  its  own  interest, 
becomes  the  oppressor  and  parasite  of  the  body 
politic.  These  stalwart  American  individuals  whom 
Whitman  demands  in  immense  numbers  as  the  coun 
terpoise  to  the  levelling  State  cut  all  classes  to  pieces. 
"The  pride  and  centripetal  isolation  of  a  human 
being  in  himself,"  he  says  in  one  of  his  timely  preg 
nant  passages,  is  the  check,  "whereby  Nature  re 
strains  the  deadly  original  relentlessness  of  all  her 
first-class  laws." 

There  is  no  reconciliation  of  this  haughty  indi 
vidualism  with  his  haughty  nationalism  possible  ex 
cept  through  faith — faith  to  believe  that  the  Ameri 
can  type  of  democratic  government  is  the  form  best 
adapted  to  the  production  of  the  largest  possible 
number  of  great  and  happy  individuals.  Rise  to 
that  faith,  and  you  find  within  reach  a  principle  of 
reconciliation  between  your  proud  nationalism,  and 
that  profound  and  sacred  instinct  in  you  which 
impels  you  to  join  hands  with  men  and  women  who 
live  under  other  flags  yet  belong  to  the  same  great 
civil  society.  Keep  your  eyes  fixed  on  the  true  goal 
of  national  life  and  you  may  keep  your  national 
loyalty  even  in  a  league  of  nations.  You  may  say 
in  all  honesty  and  with  the  full  ardor  of  patriotic 
exaltation:  "O  America,  because  you  build  for 
mankind,  I  build  for  you." 

Whitman  is  not  the  altogether   intoxicated  be- 


176  AMERICANS 

liever  in  democracy  that  he  is  usually  made  out  to 
be.  We  may  as  well  embrace  this  faith,  such  is  the 
entirely  sober  argument  of  "Democratic  Vistas," 
because  the  experiment  is  going  to  be  tried,  whether 
we  like  it  or  not.  The  deep  currents  of  the  times 
set  that  way:  "Whatever  may  be  said  in  the  way 
of  abstract  argument,  for  or  against  the  theory  of 
a  wider  democratizing  of  institutions  in  any  civilized 
country,  much  trouble  might  well  be  saved  to  all 
European  lands  by  recognizing  this  palpable  fact 
(for  a  palpable  fact  it  is),  that  some  form  of  such 
democratizing  is  about  the  only  resource  now  left. 
That,  or  chronic  dissatisfaction  continued,  mutter- 
ings  which  grow  annually  louder  and  louder,  till, 
in  due  course,  and  pretty  swiftly  in  most  cases,  the 
inevitable  crisis,  crash,  dynastic  ruin.  Anything 
worthy  to  be  called  statesmanship  in  the  Old  World, 
I  should  say,  among  the  advanced  students,  adepts, 
or  men  of  any  brains,  does  not  debate  today  whether 
to  hold  on,  attempting  to  lean  back  and  monarchize, 
or  to  look  forward  and  democratize — but  how,  and 
in  what  degree  and  part,  most  prudently  to  democ 
ratize." 

On  the  occasion  of  his  centenary  celebration 
there  was  much  inconclusive  discussion  as  to 
whether,  had  he  lived  in  these  days,  he  would  have 
been  a  "Bolshevist." 

If  Whitman  had  lived  at  the  right  place  in  these 
years  of  the  Proletarian  Millennium,  he  would  have 
been  hanged  as  a  reactionary  member  of  the  hour- 


WALT  WHITMAN  177 

geoise.  First,  he  distrusts  schemes  of  doctrinaires 
instituting  a  new  order  in  sudden  and  violent  con 
travention  of  nature,  as  these  lines  witness: 

Were  you  looking  to  be  held  together  by  lawyers? 
Or  argument  on  paper?  or  by  arms? 
Nay,  nor  the  world,  nor  any  living  thing,  will  so 
cohere. 

Secondly,  he  had  a  realistic  scheme  of  his  own  for 
stabilizing  democratic  society  by  absorbing  the  up 
per  and  lower  economic  strata  into  a  renovated  and 
homogeneous  middle:  "The  true  gravitation  hold 
of  liberalism  in  the  United  States  will  be  a  more 
universal  ownership  of  property,  general  home 
steads,  general  comfort — a  vast,  intertwining  reticu 
lation  of  wealth.  As  the  human  frame,  or  indeed, 
any  object  in  this  manifold  universe,  is  best  kept  to 
gether  by  the  simple  miracle  of  its  own  cohesion, 
and  the  necessity,  exercise  and  profit  thereof,  so  a 
great  and  varied  nationality,  occupying  millions  of 
square  miles,  were  firmest  held  and  knit  by  the  prin 
ciple  of  the  safety  and  endurance  of  the  aggregate 
of  its  middling  property  holders.  So  that,  from  an 
other  point  of  view,  ungracious  as  it  may  sound,  and 
a  paradox  after  what  we  have  been  saying,  democ 
racy  looks  with  suspicious,  ill-satisfied  eye  upon  the 
very  poor,  the  ignorant,  and  on  those  out  of  busi 
ness.  She  asks  for  men  and  women  with  occupa 
tions,  well-off,  owners  of  houses  and  acres,  and  with 
cash  in  the  bank  and  with  some  cravings  for  litera- 


178  AMERICANS 

ture,  too;  and  must  have  them."  A  passage  by 
no  means  devoid  of  political  sagacity. 

Thirdly,  Whitman  is  not  in  the  least  content  as  a 
final  term  of  progress  with  the  material  civilization 
which  he  expects  and  demands  as  the  stage  follow 
ing  the  founding  of  fundamental  institutions  and 
laws.  "The  fruition  of  democracy,  on  aught  like 
a  grand  scale,"  he  declares  with  emphasis,  "resides 
altogether  in  the  future."  Like  most  imaginative 
writers  who  have  striven  to  present  a  vast  and  com 
plex  vision,  he  has  been  grievously  misunderstood. 
His  great  songs  are  songs  of  faith,  winged  with 
anticipative  ecstasy,  outflying  the  literal  and  the 
humdrum,  soaring  down  that  far  vista  at  the  end  of 
which  a  "sublime  and  serious  Religious  Democracy" 
will  sternly  take  command.  He  has  been  described 
as  a  noisy  braggart  about  himself  and  his  country; 
but  he  is  complacent  with  hope,  not  fulfillment. 
What  he  is  bragging  about  is  God,  that  power  not 
ourselves  working  through  man  and  nature  and 
mysteriously  bringing  vast  designs  to  pass  in  spite 
of  all  that  the  almost  infinite  wickedness  and  igno 
rance  of  man  can  do  to  thwart  him. 

Finally,  Whitman  would  have  been  hanged  by  a 
canny  council  of  workmen  because  of  the  germs  of 
a  new  aristocracy  lurking  in  his  "great  persons," 
his  powerful  free  individuals,  and  pervading,  in 
deed,  all  that  he  says  or  sings.  He  is  a  reader  of 
newspapers  and  passes  for  a  shallow  fellow  with 
those  who  do  not  also  observe  that  he  is  a  de- 


WALT  WHITMAN  179 

vourer  of  bibles  and  epics.  He  is  called  a  blind 
and  silly  optimist  by  those  who  overlook  the  fact 
that  he  has  made  a  clean  breast  of  more  evil  in 
himself  and  his  countrymen  than  any  other  writer 
had  admitted  as  existing;  and  his  optimism  is  said 
to  depend  upon  his  championship  of  vulgarity  and 
mediocrity.  It  is  true  that  he  seems  to  rely  a  great 
deal  upon  the  "divine  average."  But,  then,  his 
standards  are  not  so  low.  He  is  not  such  a  facile 
leveler.  His  specimen  of  the  average  man,  what 
he  means  by  the  average  man,  is  Ulysses  Grant,  is 
Abraham  Lincoln.  Whitman  adores  America  be 
cause  she  produces  such  men,  and  he  clamors  for 
shoals  of  them — poets,  orators,  scholars — of  the 
same  bulk  and  build  and  aplomb.  He  will  not  be 
satisfied  till  he  sees  a  hundred  million  of  such  superb 
persons,  such  aristocrats,  walking  these  States.  He 
is  a  democrat  with  an  exorbitant  thirst  for  distinc 
tion,  of  heroic  mold,  elate  with  a  vision  of 
grandeurs  and  glories,  of  majesties  and  splendors 
— like  every  good  democrat  with  a  spark  of  imag 
ination. 

I  have  set  forth  some  of  the  main  points  in  Whit 
man's  system  of  ideas,  but  I  recall  his  warning:  "Do 
not  attempt  to  explain  me;  I  cannot  explain  my 
self."  And  certainly  his  service  to  us  is  neither  con 
tained  nor  containable  in  an  argument.  He  gives 
us  the  sustaining  emotion  which  prevents  argument 
from  falling  to  pieces  of  its  own  dryness.  He  ful 
fills  the  promises  and  justifies  the  faith  of  demo- 


180  AMERICANS 

cratic  society  in  his  own  characteristic  fashion,  by 
being  a  great  individual,  by  being  a  great  poet.  He 
chiefly  serves  our  society  as  poets  do:  "We  do  not 
fathom  you — we  love  you."  He  is  a  lover  himself 
and  the  cause  of  love  in  others. 

How  do  I  know  that  he  is  a  great  poet?  Not 
merely  because  such  judges  as  Emerson,  Tenny 
son  and  Swinburne  have  acknowledged  his  power. 
Not  because  he  has  achieved  a  wide  international 
reputation  and  translations  into  French,  Dutch, 
Danish,  German,  Italian,  Russian  and  Spanish.  The 
great  court  of  glory  has  pronounced  unmistakeably 
in  his  favor;  and  this  award  fortifies,  to  be  sure, 
the  individual  judgment.  But  there  is  another  very 
simple  test,  which  for  some  reason  or  other,  is  sel 
dom  applied  to  our  contemporary  verse.  What  is 
the  purpose  and  the  effect  of  great  poetry — of 
Homer,  The  Psalms,  Beowulf,  the  Song  of  Roland, 
the  Divine  Comedy,  Richard  III,  Paradise  Lost? 
It  is  to  raise  man  in  the  midst  of  his  common  life 
above  the  level  of  his  ordinary  emotion  by  filling 
him  with  a  sentiment  of  his  importance  as  a  moral 
being  and  of  the  greatness  of  his  destiny.  Does 
Whitman's  poetry  accomplish  that  end?  It  does, 
and  it  will  continue  to  do  so  with  increases  of  power 
as  the  depth  and  sweep  of  his  book,  its  responses 
to  a  wide  range  of  need,  become  familiar  in  the 
sort  of  daily  exploration  through  a  number  of  years, 
in  dull  times  and  crucial,  which  such  a  book  can  re 
pay. 


WALT  WHITMAN  181 

/ 

It  is  ungracious  to  say  that  one  can  measure  the 
magnitude  of  Whitman  by  comparing  him  with  his 
successors  in  the  free  verse  movement;  yet  a  word 
of  comparison  is  almost  unavoidable.  The  way  to 
get  at  the  matter  is  to  ask,  for  example,  whether 
the  Spoon  River  Anthology  of  Mr.  Masters 
fills  one  with  a  sentiment  of  one's  importance  as  a 
moral  being  and  of  the  greatness  of  one's  destiny. 
Does  there  not  fall  over  most  of  the  figures  in  our 
late  poetic  renaissance  "the  shadow  of  great  events 
from  which  they  have  shrunk?"  Whitman  still 
towers  above  his  American  successors  as  Pike's  Peak 
towers  above  its  foothills;  and  not  merely  by  the 
height  of  his  great  argument  and  the  lift  of  his  pas 
sion  but  also — though  they  surpass  him  in  small 
subtleties  and  superficial  finish — by  the  main  mas 
tery  of  his  instrument,  the  marshalling  of  his 
phrases,  the  production  of  the  poetic  hypnosis,  and 
the  accent  and  winning  freshness  of  his  voice.  I 
have  spoken  of  his  theme  and  the  larger  aspects 
of  his  emotion,  and  have  not  space  to  exhibit  his 
surging  cumulative  effects : 

"Here  the  doings  of  men  correspond  with  the  broad 
cast  doings  of  the  day  and  night, 

Here  is  what  moves  in  magnificent  masses  careless 
of  particulars. 

But  I  should  like  to  leave  in  a  few  lines  a  taste  of 
the  quality  of  his  voice,  responding  first  to  simple 
rapture  in  the  common  loveliness  of  the  natural 


182  AMERICANS 

world.  Most  of  us  ordinary  people  feel  it  when 
we  are  young  and  happy,  but  in  Whitman  it  is  a 
perennial  incitement  to  benediction.  No  other 
American  poet  communicates  so  abundantly  the 
sheer  joy  of  living: 

Beginning  my  studies  the  first  step  pleas'd  me  so 

much, 
The  mere  fact  consciousness,  these  forms,  the  power 

of  motion, 

The  least  insect  or  animal,  the  senses,  eyesight,  love, 
The  first  step  I  say  awed  me  and  pleas'd  me  so  much, 
I  have  hardly  gone  and  hardly  wish'd  to  go  any 

farther, 
But  stop  and  loiter  all  the  time  to  sing  it  in  ecstatic 

songs. 

Add  this  impression  of  a  prairie  sunset: 

Pure  luminous  color  fighting  the  silent  shadows  to 
the  last. 

And  that  exquisite  line: 

I  am  he  that  walks  with  the  tender  and  growing 
night. 

Then  for  his  note  in  compassion,  read  "Recon 
ciliation,"  remembering  that  here  is  no  feigned 
emotion,  but  the  very  spirit  of  the  man  bending 
above  some  Rebel  soldier  in  the  old  Washington 
days — the  bearded  angel  of  spiritual  Reconstruc 
tion: 


WALT  WHITMAN  183 

Word  over  all,  beautiful  as  the  sky, 

Beautiful  that  war  and  all  its  deeds  of  carnage  must 
in  time  be  utterly  lost, 

That  the  hands  of  the  sisters  Death  and  Night  in 
cessantly  softly  wash  again  and  ever  again, 
this  soil'd  world; 

For  my  enemy  is  dead,  a  man  divine  as  myself  is 
dead, 

1  look  where  he  lies  white-faced  and  still  in  the 
coffin — I  draw  near, 

Bend  down  and  touch  lightly  with  my  lips  the  white 
face  in  the  coffin. 

Or  read  "A  Sight  in  Camp  in  the  Daybreak  Gray 
and  Dim,"  another  picture  of  the  dead  soldier,  end 
ing  with  a  swift  mystical  vision  of  his  transfiguration 
by  the  love  which  passes  understanding: 

I  think  this  face  is  the  face  of  the  Christ  him 
self, 

Dead  and  divine  and  brother  of  all,  and  here  again 
he  lies. 

There  is  more  of  the  high  pity  and  terror  of  war, 
more  of  the  valor  and  tenderness  that  come  straight 
from  the  magnanimous  heart,  in  Whitman's  battle 
chants  and  dirges  than  in  all  our  other  war  poetry 
put  together. 

"In  Homer  and  Shakespere,"  says  Whitman  truly, 
one  will  find  a  "certain  heroic  ecstasy,  which,  or  the 
suggestion  of  which,  is  never  absent  in  the  works  of 
the  masters."  That  heroic  ecstacy  is  present  in 
Whitman  himself.  There  is  not  a  page  of  him  in 


184  AMERICANS 

which  he  does  not  impart  it.  The  continuous  mir 
acle  is  that  he  manages  to  impart  it  with  only  a 
line  here  and  there  in  the  familiar  grand  style  of 
the  masters,  and  these  remain,  one  suspects,  by  his 
inadvertence  as  in  his  salutation  to  a  tawny 
headed  warrior: 

Now  ending  well  in  death  the  splendid  fever  of 
thy  deeds, 

•  ••••••• 

Leaving  behind  thee  a  memory  sweet  to  soldiers, 
Thou  yieldest  up  thyself. 

These  are  lines  that  the  old  masters  would  recognize 
as  in  their  style;  but  the  heroic  ecstasy  lives  too  in 
the  new  style  of  his  own: 

Fall  behind  me  States! 

A  man  before  all — myself,  typical,  before  all, 

Give  me  the  pay  I  have  served  for, 

Give  me  to  sing  of  the  great  Idea,  take  all  the  rest. 

Or  consider  his  salute:  "To  Him  That  Was  Cruci 
fied": 

My  spirit  to  yours  dear  brother, 

Do  not  mind  because  many  sounding  your  name 

do  not  understand  you, 
I  do  not  sound  your  name,  but  I  understand  you. 

In  nothing  does  a  man  measure  himself  more 
decisively  than  in  his  judgment  of  other  men.    Whit- 


WALT  WHITMAN  185 

man  has  an  instinct  and  talent  for  recognizing  the 
heroic  in  literature,  in  history,  among  his  own  con 
temporaries.  He  recognizes  it  in  Christ,  in  Lin 
coln,  in  the  nameless  crumpled  corpse  amid  the  de 
bris  of  battle ;  and  he  responds  to  it  with  the  adora 
tion  of  a  kindred  spirit.  This  is  a  decisive  test  of 
his  quality.  This  instinct  keeps  him  near  the  central 
stream  of  our  national  life,  an  unperturbed  and 
reassuring  pilot  in  misty  weather.  In  recognition 
of  this  virtue  in  him  I  choose  for  my  last  word  this 
line  of  his : 

The  years  straying  toward  infidelity  he  withholds  by 
his  steady  faith. 


VII 

JOAQUIN   MILLER:   POETICAL   CON 
QUISTADOR  OF  THE  WEST 

Joaquin  Miller  was  a  picturesque  figure  on  the 
American  scene  for  more  than  forty  years.  The 
romantic  life  which  he  had  conceived  and  which  he 
had,  in  considerable  measure,  enacted,  he  recorded 
in  both  verse  and  prose,  with  due  regard  for  the 
attention  of  posterity.  Though  much  of  his  work 
is  a  genuine  conquest,  he  wrote  too  easily  and  he 
wrote  too  much.  In  the  summer  of  1921,  only 
eight  years  after  his  death,  though  occasional  curi 
ous  pilgrims  visited  his  home,  The  Hights,  above 
San  Francisco  Bay,  and  carried  off  a  stone  from  his 
monument  to  Moses,  the  Law-Giver,  booksellers  of 
a  dozen  shops  in  the  cities  that  fringe  the  bay 
looked  up  with  surprise  when  one  inquired  for  a 
copy  of  his  works,  and  replied  that  they  had  none. 
It  is  not  strange  that  popular  interest  refuses  to 
float  a  six-volume  edition  of  Miller.  But  our  liter 
ature  is  not  so  rich  in  distinctive  national  types 
that  we  can  afford  to  let  this  poetical  pioneer  fade, 
as  he  is  now  in  danger  of  fading,  into  a  colorless 

186 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  187 

shadow  like  the   once  famous  scouts  that  accom 
panied  Fremont  into  the  West. 

He  is,  to  be  sure,  difficult  to  fix  for  an  adequate 
portrait,  because  in  his  time  he  played  several  parts; 
and  he  himself  was  never  quite  sure  in  which  of  his 
various  costumes  and  poses  he  would  most  adorn 
the  national  gallery.  An  emigrant  from  the  Mid 
dle  Border,  a  gold-hunter  of  the  Far  West,  an  In 
dian  fighter,  a  frontier  judge,  he  first  rose  above 
the  horizon,  in  1871,  with  assistance  and  cheers 
from  England,  as  the  long-haired,  top-booted 
"poet  of  the  Sierras."  Even  at  the  outset  of  his 
career,  he  was  not  quite  satisfied  with  that  role. 
His  own  early  aspiration  was  rather  to  be  known 
as  "the  American  Byron;"  and,  in  keeping  with 
that  high  calling,  he  shook  off  the  dust  of  his 
native  land,  wandered  for  a  time  in  "exile,"  and 
bore  through  Italy  and  the  Aegean  Isles  the  page 
ant  of  his  bleeding  heart.  Following  his  personal 
contact  with  the  Pre-Raphaelites  in  London,  this 
impressionable  mountaineer  of  the  new  world  dis- 
cipled  himself  for  a  brief  period  in  the  early 
'seventies  to  Swinburne  and  the  Rossettis,  was  in 
tensely  "aesthetic,"  and  contemplated  devoting 
himself  to  the  Orient.  Returning  to  America 
about  1875,  he  made  through  his  middle  years 
numerous  ventures  in  prose  fiction  and  drama, 
ranging  all  the  way  from  the  Forty-Niners 
and  the  Indians  of  the  Pacific  slope  to  fast 
life  in  New  York  and  to  the  more  or  less  autobio- 


188  AMERICANS 

graphical  affairs  of  the  artist  Alphonso  Murietta  in 
Italy  ( The  One  Fair  Woman}.  In  what  we  may 
call  his  final  period,  after  his  return  to  California 
in  the  middle  'eighties,  there  grew  strong  in  him  a 
sense  that  he  was  the  leader  of  a  native  poetical 
movement,  a  spiritual  seer  with  Messianic  or  at 
least  prophetic  mission,  and  in  the  flowing  hair  and 
beard  of  his  last  years,  stalking  majestically  under 
the  trees  which  he  had  planted  by  his  monuments 
on  The  Hights,  and  gazing  dreamily  out  over  the 
Pacific,  he  looked  the  part. 

Now,  whatever  one  may  think  of  Miller's  actual 
contribution  to  poetry  or  to  prose  fiction,  this  evolu 
tion  of  an  Indian  fighter  into  the  Moses  of  the 
Golden  Gate  is  an  extraordinary  phenomenon.  Con 
sidered  merely  as  a  detached  individual,  he  is  abun 
dantly  interesting  to  the  biographer.  But  he  re 
pays  sympathetic  curiosity  most  generously  perhaps 
when  one  regards  and  studies  him  as  a  register  of 
the  power  exerted  upon  the  individual  by  the  Ameri 
can  environment  and  the  national  culture,  even  at 
their  thinnest  and  crudest.  To  study  him  in  this 
fashion,  the  first  requisite  is  a  more  coherent  account 
of  his  career  than  has  hitherto  been  available. 
Joaquin  Miller  was  his  own  principal  hero,  but  by  a 
singular  fatality  his  adventures  have  never  been  ade 
quately  written.  Certain  scenes  and  events  he  him 
self  sketched  repeatedly;  but  concerning  many  pass 
ages  of  his  history  he  was  extremely  reticent.  What 
is  more  serious,  he  had  no  steady  narrative  power. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  189 

Lifelong  an  adventurous  rover,  in  love  with  action, 
he  finds  it  next  to  impossible  to  stick  to  the  thread 
of  his  story.  As  soon  as  he  grasps  the  pen,  he 
overflows  with  sentiment  and  moralization,  and  he 
riots  in  description.  Consequently  his  longer  poems 
frequently  produce  the  effect  of  panorama,  and  the 
feeling  which  they  present  remains  obscure  till  the 
shifting  pictures  are  connected  and  explained  by  the 
events  of  his  own  life. 

To  the  student  of  American  culture,  the  case  of 
Joaquin  Miller  is  the  more  valuable  from  the  fact 
that  he  did  not — like  Bret  Harte,  for  example — put 
on  the  frontier  as  a  literary  garment,  after  an  east 
ern  upbringing.  By  birth  and  ancestry  he  belonged 
in  the  great  migration  which  settled  the  Middle 
Border  and  the  Far  West.  He  was  born  in  1841,  in 
a  covered  wagon,  "at  or  about  the  time  it  crossed 
the  line  dividing  Indiana  from  Ohio."  His  mother, 
Margaret  Witt,  of  Dutch  stock  from  North  Caro 
lina,  and  his  father,  Hulings  Miller,  of  Scotch  stock 
from  Kentucky,  were  married  in  Indiana ;  and  after 
some  oscillation  between  Indiana  and  Ohio,  gravi 
tated  slowly  westward  for  a  decade  through  the 
Miami  Reservation  and  up  along  the  banks  of  the 
Wabash  and  the  Tippecanoe  rivers,  before  they 
heard  a  clear  call  to  follow  the  overland  trail  to  the 
coast.  Meanwhile  they  made  various  cabin  homes 
for  their  young  family.  The  mother  cooked  and 
sewed  and  wove  and  spun.  The  father  worked  his 
little  clearings,  failed  as  storekeeper,  served  as 


190  AMERICANS 

magistrate,  and  kept  school  for  the  children  of  the 
wilderness.  It  was  a  rough  life,  but  every  reference 
of  Miller  to  his  childhood  indicates  that  it  was  in 
many  respects  a  good  and  happy  life;  and  every 
reference  to  his  parents  is  marked  by  a  tenderness 
without  condescension.  These  simple  people  were 
impecunious,  restless,  and  not  very  shrewd — rather 
sentimental  and  visionary.  But  they  were  honest  and 
pious,  with  the  pacificism  of  the  Quaker  discipline 
and  the  abolitionism  of  Horace  Greely;  they  were 
loyal  to  one  another  and  gentle  and  affectionate  in 
all  the  family  relationships ;  they  were  kindly  in  their 
intercourse  with  the  Indians  of  the  Reservation; 
and  they  were  hospitable  with  their  meager  shelter 
to  wanderers  less  fortunately  circumstanced.  Most 
of  the  parents'  traits  ultimately  reappeared  in  the 
son,  from  their  hospitality  to  their  turn  for  roving. 
The  migratory  influences  from  his  immediate  fam 
ily  were  re-enforced  by  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The 
Millers  were  not  alone  in  finding  it  difficult  to  "set 
tle  down"  in  the  eighteen-forties.  It  was  an  ex 
pansive  and  exploratory  epoch  in  both  the  physical 
and  the  intellectual  senses.  The  East  was  in  a 
philosophical  and  social  ferment.  Descendants  of 
the  Puritans,  corporeally  resident  in  Concord,  were 
extending  their  mental  frontiers  to  Greece  and 
India,  and  in  1841  Emerson  published  the  first  series 
of  his  essays,  "striking  up"  for  a  new  world.  It 
is  not  clear  that  these  expansive  utterances  promptly 
reached  the  Indiana  settlement.  But  between  1842 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  191 

and  T844  Fremont  started  a  movement  which  was 
the  material  complement  of  Transcendentalism  by 
his  series  of  bold  expeditions  to  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  Oregon,  and  California.     Fremont's  account 
of    these    explorations    Hulings    Miller    borrowed 
from  an  Indian  agent  and  read  in  the  evenings  to 
his  assembled  family.     "I  was  never  so  fascinated," 
says  Joaquin,   "I   never  grew  so   fast  in  my  life. 
Every  scene  and  circumstance  in  the  narrative  was 
painted  in  my  mind  to  last,  and  to  last  forever." 
The  hide  of  the  "woolly  white  horse"  celebrated  in 
Fremont's  presidential  campaign  is  exhibited  to  this 
day  in  Miller's  home  in  California;  and  it  may  be 
mentioned  here  that  Fremont's  guide,   the  hunter 
and  Indian  fighter  Kit  Carson,  is  the  hero  of  one 
of  Miller's  most  readable  poems.     In  1845  Texas 
was  admitted  to  the  Union,  and  Sam  Houston,  an 
other  of  the  poet's  western  heroes,  was  elected  to 
the  United  States  Senate.     At  about  this  time  the 
Mormons,  whom  he  was  to  commemorate  in  The 
Danites,  were  drifting  westward   through   Illinois 
and  Missouri;  and  in  1847  Brigham  Young  led  the 
faithful  into  the  valley  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake. 
In    1849    the    cry — "Gold   is    discovered    in    Cali 
fornia!" — ran  like  prairie  fire  among  our  middle- 
borderers,  and  doubled  the  attraction  of  the  full 
section  of  land  offered  to  each  settler  in  Oregon,  in 
a  bill  introduced  by  Senator  Linn  of  Missouri.     By 
1850,  still  another  of  Miller's  heroes,  the  enigmatic 
William  Walker,  was  in  California,  soon  to  be  pre- 


192  AMERICANS 

paring  his  filibustering  excursions  into  Mexico  and 
Nicaragua.  To  add  the  last  attraction,  General  Joe 
Lane,  once  a  pupil  of  Hulings  Miller  in  the  sugar 
camps  of  Indiana,  had  been  appointed  Governor  of 
Oregon. 

The  multiplied  appeals  of  the  Far  West  had  be 
come  irresistible.  As  soon  as  they  could  equip  them 
selves  for  the  journey,  three  years  after  the  dis 
covery  of  gold,  the  Millers  started  for  the  promised 
land.  With  a  presentiment  on  his  father's  part  that 
it  would  some  day  be  a  pleasure  to  go  over  the 
record,  Joaquin,  then  in  his  eleventh  year,  kept  a 
journal  of  the  great  expedition.  Though  this  un 
fortunately  was  lost,  the  poetic  residuum  of  his  im 
pressions  is  preserved  in  "Exodus  for  Oregon"  and 
"The  Ship  In  The  Desert."  As  he  recalled  their 
adventure  many  years  later,  they  set  out  in  wagons 
on  the  seventeenth  of  March,  1852;  in  May,  they 
crossed  the  Missouri  above  St.  Joe,  where  they 
found  the  banks  for  miles  crowded  with  tents 
of  the  emigrants;  followed  the  Platte  River; 
threaded  Fremont's  South  Pass  over  the  Rockies; 
rested  at  Salt  Lake  City;  skirmished  with  the  In 
dians  in  the  desert;  descended  to  the  head  waters  of 
the  Snake  River;  crossed  the  Cascade  Mountains  at 
The  Dalles ;  and,  after  seven  months  and  five  days, 
ended  their  march  of  three  thousand  miles  in  Ore 
gon,  near  the  middle  of  the  Willamette  Valley — 
"the  most  poetic,  gorgeous  and  glorious  valley  in 
flowers  and  snow-covered  mountains  on  the  globe." 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  193 

Miller's  enthusiasm  for  the  scenery  of  Oregon  is 
only  equalled  by  his  enthusiasm  for  the  new  settlers. 
"The  vast  multitude,"  he  declares,  that  fought  their 
way  across  the  plains  in  the  face  of  cholera,  hos 
tile  Indians,  famine,  and  drouth,  "was,  as  a  rule, 
religious,  and  buried  their  dead  with  hymns  and 
prayers,  all  along  the  dreary  half  year's  journey  on 
which  no  coward  ever  ventured,  and  where  the  weak 
fell  by  the  wayside,  leaving  a  natural  selection  of 
good  and  great  people,  both  in  soul  and  body." 

It  was  about  two  years  after  the  establishment  of 
the  Millers  in  Oregon  that  Joaquin's  independent 
adventures  began.  They  had  cultivated  a  little  land, 
bought  a  few  cows  and  sheep  and  hens,  and  were 
running  a  tavern  in  a  small  way.  The  father  and 
elder  brother  were  now  absent  teaching  school,  and 
Joaquln  and  his  younger  brother  Jimmy  were  left 
with  their  mother  to  look  after  the  place.  Stories 
brought  up  from  the  mining  camps  of  California 
by  pedlars  and  itinerant  preachers  had  for  some 
time  been  making  him  restless;  and  it  had  been 
conceded,  he  says,  that  he  was  ultimately  to  be 
allowed  to  seek  his  fortune  in  the  wicked  and  dan 
gerous  territory  to  the  southward.  In  his  four 
teenth  year,  anticipating  the  parental  consent,  he  ran 
away,  and  joining  a  party  of  miners  who  were  open 
ing  a  placer  claim  in  a  wooded  gulch  by  the  Klamath 
River,  just  below  the  border  between  Oregon  and 
California,  he  offered  his  services  as  cook  and  dish 
washer.  Here  began  his  more  intimate  acquaintance 


194  AMERICANS 

with  the  tougher  and  more  miscellaneous  element 
of  the  western  population  which  was  streaming 
through  the  Golden  Gate — the  Australians,  the 
European  adventurers,  the  Mexicans,  the  Chinese, 
and  questionable  wanderers  from  eastern  cities. 
And  here,  if  his  memory  is  to  be  trusted,  he  wrote 
his  first  song,  in  celebration  of  an  adjutant  cook's 
marriage  to  a  woman  from  Australia. 

Joaquin  was  at  this  time  small  for  his  age,  slen 
der,  pale,  frail-looking,  with  hair  of  the  color  of 
"hammered  gold,"  reaching  to  his  shoulders.  The 
camp  diet  of  bacon  and  beans  did  not  agree  with 
him  and  his  first  mining  experience  was  terminated 
by  a  serious  attack  of  scurvy.  He  was  nursed  back 
to  health  in  Yreka  by  Dr.  Ream  and  a  "kind  little 
Chinaman;"  and  then  was  taken  by  a  mysterious 
stranger  to  another  camp  for  the  winter  by  the 
forks  of  several  little  streams  which  flow  into  the 
Klamath  River  from  the  north  of  Mt.  Shasta. 
Here,  at  a  later  period,  he  laid  the  scene  of  The 
Danltes — "my  famous  play  but  have  always  been 
sorry  I  printed  it,  as  it  is  unfair  to  the  Mor 
mons  and  the  Chinese."  The  tall  stranger  with 
whom  he  spent  the  winter  is  another  of  his  heroes 
whom  at  this  time  he  seems  to  have  regarded  with 
unqualified  adoration.  He  figures  so  largely  and 
mysteriously  in  his  work  that  he  requires  identifica 
tion.  In  the  introduction  to  the  collected  poems  he 
is  described  merely  as  "the  Prince,"  and  is  said 
to  have  gone  "south,"  in  the  spring  of  1855.  But  in 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  195 

the  Life  r Among  tine  Modocs,  1873,  he  is  repre 
sented  as  a  very  handsome  and  romantic  profes 
sional  gambler  of  great  courage  and  chivalrous 
nature  who  was  generally  understood  to  be  a  prince, 
but  who,  after  fighting  with  Walker  in  Nicaragua, 
acknowledged  himself  to  be  only  plain  James 
Thompson,  an  American.  In  1876,  Miller  dedi 
cated  his  First  Families  Of  The  Sierras  as  follows : 
"To  my  old  companion  in  arms,  Prince  Jamie 
Tomas,  of  Leon,  Nicaragua."  But  that  this  "Prince 
Jamie  Tomas"  was  the  James  Thompson  of  "Life 
Among  The  Modocs  and  the  mysterious  stranger 
of  the  autobiographical  sketch  is  made  clear  at  last 
by  a  footnote  to  the  poem  called  "Thomas  of 
Tigre,"  in  the  fourth  volume  of  the  Bear  Edition. 
After  the  departure  of  "the  Prince,"  the  most 
influential  friend  of  the  strange  boyhood  days  on 
Mt.  Shasta  was  another  mysterious  figure,  Joseph 
De  Bloney,  whom  Miller  met  in  the  spring  of  1855. 
In  an  apparently  serious  sketch  of  him,  included  in 
Memorle  and  Rime,  De  Bloney  is  described  as  "a 
Californian  John  Brown  in  a  small  way."  Accord 
ing  to  this  account,  he  was  of  an  old  noble  Swiss 
family,  and  had  probably  crossed  the  plains  with 
Fremont  under  an  impulse  similar  to  that  which 
animated  Brigham  Young  in  Utah  and  Walker  in 
Nicaragua — an  impulse  to  found  a  new  state.  "His 
ambition  was  to  unite  the  Indians  about  the  base 
of  Mt.  Shasta  and  establish  a  sort  of  Indian  repub 
lic,  the  prime  and  principal  object  of  which  was 


196  AMERICANS 

to  set  these  Indians  entirely  apart  from  the  ap 
proach  of  the  white  man,  draw  an  impassable  line, 
in  fact,  behind  which  the  Indian  would  be  secure  in 
his  lands,  his  simple  life,  his  integrity,  and  his  purity. 
...  It  was  a  hard  undertaking  at  best,  perilous,  al 
most  as  much  as  a  man's  life  was  worth  to  befriend 
an  Indian  in  those  stormy  days  on  the  border,  when 
every  gold-hunter  .  .  .  counted  it  his  privi 
lege,  if  not  his  duty  to  shoot  an  Indian  on  sight. 
An  Indian  sympathizer  was  more  hated  in  those 
days,  is  still,  than  ever  was  an  abolitionist.  .  .  . 
De  Bloney  gradually  gathered  about  twenty-five 
men  around  him  in  the  mountains,  took  up  homes, 
situated  his  men  around  him,  planted,  dug  gold, 
did  what  he  could  to  civilize  the  people  and  subdue 
the  savages.  .  .  .  But  he  had  tough  elements 
to  deal  with.  The  most  savage  men  were  the  white 
men.  The  Indians,  the  friendly  ones,  were  the 
tamest  of  his  people.  These  white  men  would  come 
and  go;  now  they  would  marry  the  Indian  women 
and  now  join  a  prospecting  party  and  disappear  for 
months,  even  years.  At  one  time  nearly  all  went 
off  to  join  Walker  in  Nicaragua." 

Under  the  influence  of  this  odd  character,  young 
Joaquin  seems  for  the  time  to  have  forgotten  the 
Oregon  homestead,  and  to  have  embraced  the  dream 
of  a  little  Indian  republic  on  Mt.  Shasta.  Between 
1855  and  1859  he  represents  himself  as  living  in  the 
shadow  of  the  mountains  with  De  Bloney  and  the 
Indians  and  "Indian  Joe,"  a  scout  and  horsetrader 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  197 

of  German  birth,  who  had  been  with  Fremont,  and 
who  furnished  Miller  some  of  the  materials  for  his 
poems.  He  was  also  on  intimate  terms  with  the 
Indian  Chief  Blackbeard,  who,  he  remarks  in 
Memorie  and  Rime,  had  a  very  beautiful  daughter, 
and  gave  him  a  "beautiful  little  valley,"  where  he 
built  a  cabin,  and  "first  began  to  write."  According 
to  Life  Among  the  Modocs,  a  romance  with  an  auto 
biographical  core,  he  married  the  chief's  daughter 
and  became  eventually  the  leader  in  the  movement 
to  unite  the  tribes  in  an  Indian  republic.  These 
stories  of  his  Indian  bride  and  of  his  fighting  de 
fiance  of  the  white  men  seem  rather  more  plausible 
when  one  forgets  that  he  was  but  fourteen  when  he 
remarked  the  beauty  of  the  girl  and  only  seventeen 
when  he  assumed  the  responsibilities  for  which,  ac 
cording  to  Memorie  and  Rime,  De  Bloney's  grow 
ing  inebriety  disqualified  him. 

Viewed  from  within  by  a  romantic  poet,  this 
colony  of  adventurers  and  Indians  was  a  noble  en 
terprise  for  the  preservation  of  an  oppressed  race; 
viewed  from  without  it  probably  seemed  more  like 
a  nest  of  horse-thieves.  Its  importance  for  Miller 
was  partly  in  its  development  of  his  romantic  sym 
pathy  with  the  outlaw.  In  a  paper  on  "How  I 
Came  To  Be  A  Writer  Of  Books,"  contributed  to 
Lippincott's  in  1886,  he  illustrates  this  point,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  explains  the  origin  of  his  pen-name 
"Joaquin."  His  parents  had  called  him  Cincin- 
natus  Heine  (or  Hiner) ;  but,  during  his  sojourn  on 


198  AMERICANS 

Mt.  Shasta,  his  friends  had  already  begun  to  em 
ploy  the  more  familiar  name.  According  to  this 
account,  he  had  made  several  trips  with  Mexican 
horse  and  mule  drivers  down  into  Arizona  and 
northern  Mexico,  and,  on  these  expeditions,  "these 
Mexicans  were  most  kind  to  me."  They,  on  the 
contrary,  were  treated  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  con 
querors  of  California  with  a  brutality  which  was 
"monstrous."  "It  was  this,"  says  Miller,  "that  had 
driven  Joaquin  Murietta,  while  yet  a  youth,  to  be 
come  the  most  terrible  and  bloody  outlaw  our  land 
has  ever  known.  A  reward  of  many  thousands  had 
been  offered  for  his  head,  he  had  been  captured, 
killed,  and  his  head  was  in  spirits  and  on  exhibition 
in  San  Francisco,1  when  I  took  up  my  pen  for  the 
first  time  and  wrote  a  public  letter  in  defence  of  the 
Mexicans."  In  consequence  of  this  letter,  he  was 
banteringly  identified  by  a  Sacramento  paper  with 
the  bandit.  His  friends  continued  the  banter.  The 
name  was  revived  when  he  returned  to  Oregon,  and 
was  employed  to  twit  him,  when  he  became  an 
editor.  And  so  he  finally  accepted  it  and  used  it  in 
the  title  of  his  first  book. 

In  the  chapter  of  his  relations  with  the  Indians, 
there  are  manifold  obscurities  and  contradictions. 
He  adhered  pretty  consistently  throughout  his  life 
to  the  assertion  that  he  was  in  three  Indian  battles 


1  In  spite  of  this  capital  evidence,  Miller  elsewhere  raises  a  doubt 
whether  Joaquin  Murietta  had  actually  been  killed,  and  plays  with 
the  notion  that  he  himself  may  have  been  the  original  "Joaquin." 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  199 

or  campaigns,  the  Battle  of  Castle  Rocks,  the  "Pit 
River  War,"  and  a  later  campaign  in  Oregon.  But 
according  to  one  set  of  stories  he  figures  as  a  rene 
gade  fighting  with  the  Indians  against  the  whites; 
while  according  to  the  other  set  of  stories  he  is 
fighting  with  the  whites  against  the  Indians.  The 
chief  sources  of  the  renegade  story  are  Life  Amongst 
the  Modocs  and  Memorie  and  Rime;  but  he  still 
calls  himself  a  renegade  in  the  introduction  to  the 
Bear  Edition.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  in  exist- 
ance  among  the  papers  preserved  by  the  Miller 
family  a  petition  to  the  government  for  damages, 
drawn  up  by  Miller  but  never  presented,  in  which 
he  represents  himself  as  the  victim  of  Indian  depre 
dations;  and  in  his  annotations  of  the  poem  "Old 
Gib  At  Castle  Rocks,"  he  establishes  by  a  sworn 
affidavit  that  this  first  battle  was  against  the 
"Modocs  and  Other  Renegades,"  and  that  his 
wound  in  the  head  was  received  while  he  was  fight 
ing  at  Judge  Gibson's  side.  In  Memorie  and  Rime, 
however,  he  declares  that  the  Battle  of  Castle  Rocks 
was  fought  under  the  leadership  of  De  Bloney,  to 
punish  unfriendly  Indians  for  burning  his  camp. 
But  in  the  introduction  to  the  Bear  Edition,  he  says 
nothing  of  De  Bloney;  the  leader  of  Miller's  party 
is  there  represented  as  Mountain  Joe,  who  in  the 
battle  unites  forces  with  Judge  Gibson,  the  alcalde 
of  the  district. 

The  disparities  in  his  various  accounts  may  be 
explained  in  three  ways.     First,  Miller  did  in  his 


200  AMERICANS 

poems  and  prose  narratives  deliberately  adulterate 
his  facts  with  imaginary  elements  in  the  interest 
of  romance,  and  like  his  early  model  Lord  Byron, 
he  enjoyed  and  encouraged  identification  of  himself 
with  all  his  hard-riding,  hard-fighting,  and  amorous 
heroes.  Secondly,  he  tells  us  that  as  a  result  of  his 
arrow  wound  in  the  head  and  neck  at  the  Battle 
of  Castle  Rocks,  "on  the  15th  day  of  June,  1855," 
he  lost  his  memory  for  months,  was  "nearly  a  year" 
in  recovering,  and  was  somewhat  feeble  minded  for 
some  time  after.  Thirdly,  if  he  ever  actually  be 
came  a  renegade  and  participated  in  outlaw  raids, 
when  he  returned  to  civilization,  he  indulged  in  wise 
"lapses  of  memory." 

With  a  consciousness,  then,  that  we  are  tread 
ing  the  uncertain  border  between  fact  and  fiction, 
we  pull  the  arrow  from  Joaquin's  neck  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1855,  and  commit  him  to  the  care  of  an 
Indian  woman,  who  treats  him  as  her  son.  Late  in 
the  fall,  restored  at  last  to  his  senses  and  beginning 
to  recover  his  strength,  he  teaches  school  in  a  min 
ing  camp  near  Shasta  City  at  night  and  tries  to 
mine  by  day — rather  strenuous  activities  for  a 
feeble-minded  convalescent!  But  in  the  following 
spring,  1856,  he  again  joins  the  red  men  on  the 
mountain.  "When  the  Modocs  rose  up  one  night 
and  massacred  eighteen  men,  every  man  in  Pitt 
River  Valley,  I  alone  was  spared" — thus  runs  the 
introduction  to  the  Bear  Edition — "and  spared  only 
because  I  was  Los  bobo,  the  fool.  Then  more  bat- 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  201 

ties  and  two  more  wounds.  My  mind  was  as  the 
mind  of  a  child  and  my  memory  is  uncertain  here." 
But  according  to  Memorie  and  Rime,  news  of  the 
Pitt  River  massacre  came  to  Joaquin  in  the  spring 
of  1857,  when  he  was  encamped  on  the  spurs  of  Mt. 
Shasta,  "sixty  miles  distant;"  so  that  it  must  have 
been  in  a  later  stage  of  the  "war"  that  he  got  his 
"bullet  through  the  right  arm."  Had  he  complicity 
in  the  massacre?  He  raises  the  question.  He  says 
that  he  knew  in  advance  that  it  had  been  planned, 
and  he  sympathized  with  its  perpetrators  years 
later.  Following  it,  he  made  an  expedition  to 
Shasta  City  for  ammunition  to  arm  De  Bloney's 
Indians  "against  the  brutal  and  aggressive  white 
men" ;  had  a  horse  shot  under  him  by  the  pursuing 
whites,  stole  another  horse,  was  overtaken,  threat 
ened  with  hanging,  lodged  in  Shasta  City  jail,  "and 
my  part  in  the  wild  attempt  to  found  an  Indian 
republic  was  rewarded  with  a  prompt  indictment  for 
stealing  horses."  This,  he  says,  was  in  1859.  Af 
ter  long  confinement,  he  was  delivered  from  jail  by 
the  Indians  on  the  night  of  the  4th  of  July,  thrown 
upon  a  horse,  "and  such  a  ride  for  freedom  and 
fresh  air  was  never  seen  before."  (See  Memorie 
and  Rime,  pp.  234-235 ;  Life  Amongst  the  Modocs, 
chap,  xxx,  and  The  Tale  of  the  Tall  Alcalde.) 

Miller  hints,  in  Memorie  and  Rime,  at  one  more 
disastrous  attempt  to  carry  out  De  Bloney's  plan 
for  the  republic,  followed  by  separation  from  his 
leader,  and  flight  to  Washington  Territory.  But 


202  AMERICANS 

in  the  introduction  to  the  Bear  Edition,  he  inter 
poses  at  this  point  in  his  career,  though  without 
dates  and  vaguely  and  briefly,  his  connection  with 
the  filibuster  William  Walker.  "I,  being  a  rene 
gade,"  he  says,  "descended  to  San  Francisco  and 
set  sail  for  Boston,  but  stopped  at  Nicaragua  with 
Walker."  In  his  poem  "With  Walker  in  Nicara 
gua,"  he  represents  himself  as  riding  side  by  side 
with  the  filibuster  in  his  campaigns  and  as  treated 
by  him  like  a  son;  and  he  always  encouraged  the 
common  belief  that  his  poem  had  a  substantial  auto 
biographical  core.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  evidence 
for  concluding  that  it  had  none.  Walker  sailed 
from  San  Francisco  in  May  and  landed  in  Nicara 
gua  on  June  16,  1855.  On  the  previous  day,  Miller 
was  wounded  at  Castle  Rocks,  in  northern  Califor 
nia.  In  May,  1857,  Walker  left  Nicaragua  and 
was  a  paroled  prisoner  in  the  United  States  till 
August,  1860,  when  he  landed  in  Honduras,  where 
he  was  executed  on  the  12th  of  September  in  the 
same  year.  Miller  later  associated  himself  with  his 
hero  by  publishing  the  last  words  of  Walker,  ob 
tained  from  the  priest  who  attended  the  execution ; 
but  Miller  says  in  his  notes  on  the  poem  in  the  Bear 
Edition:  "I  was  not  with  him  on  this  last  expedi 
tion."  Of  course  the  intended  implication  is  that 
he  was  with  Walker  on  a  previous  expedition.  Re 
cruits  from  California  sailed  down  to  join  the  fili 
buster  at  frequent  intervals,  it  is  true,  and  Miller 
may  conceivably  have  visited  Nicaragua  with  one  of 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  203 

these  parties ;  but  if  any  credit  is  to  be  given  to  his 
Indian  stories,  he  was  recovering  from  his  Castle 
Rocks  wound  from  June,  1855,  till  the  spring  of 
1856,  when  he  joined  the  red  men  on  the  moun 
tains;  he  spends  the  winter  on  the  spurs  of  Mt. 
Shasta,  and  in  the  spring  of  1857  he  becomes  impli 
cated  in  the  Pitt  River  Valley  War,  in  which  he  is 
again  seriously  wounded;  and  his  connections  with 
this  affair  are  not  terminated  till  1859.  He  might 
then  have  set  out  in  time  to  join  Walker's  fatal 
expedition  in  Honduras;  but  he  tells  us  that  he  did 
not.  Walker,  in  his  account  of  The  War  in  Nica 
ragua,  published  in  1860,  nowhere  mentions  the  boy 
whom  he  is  alleged  to  have  fathered.  One's  final 
impression  is  that  the  poem  is  fiction,  colored  by  the 
tales  and  published  narratives  of  the  filibusters 
and  perhaps  by  Miller's  subsequent  acquaintance 
with  Central  America.  And  this  impression  is 
strengthened  by  Miller's  reply  to  one  who  asked  him 
point  blank  whether  he  was  ever  with  Walker  in 
Nicaragua:  "Was  Milton  ever  in  Hell?"  2 

The  fiasco  of  De  Bloney's  and  Joaquin's  Mt. 
Shasta  "republic"  fell,  according  to  the  legend,  in 
the  year  of  John  Brown's  raid  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
and  two  years  after  the  ejection  of  Walker  from 
Nicaragua.  In  Miller's  mind  these  three  curious 
attempts  to  escape  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
United  States  became  closely  associated  memories 

a  For  this  anecdote  I  am  indebted  to  Mrs.  Miller. 


204  AMERICANS 

of  forlorn  hopes,  with  a  singular  appeal  to  his 
imagination.  Writing  at  Harper's  Ferry  in  1883 
(Memorie  and  Rime,  228  ff.),  he  gives  this  account 
of  his  movements  and  sentiments  following  his 
alleged  connection  with  Walker  and  De  Bloney: 
"I  made  my  way  to  Washington  Territory,  sold  my 
pistols,  and  settled  down  on  the  banks  of  the  Co 
lumbia,  near  Lewis  River,  and  taught  school.  And 
here  it  was  that  the  story  of  John  Brown,  his  raid, 
his  fight,  his  capture,  and  his  execution,  all  came 
to  me.  Do  you  wonder  that  my  heart  went  out  to 
him  and  remained  with  him?  I,  too,  had  been  in 
jail.  Death  and  disgrace  were  on  my  track,  and 
might  find  me  any  day  hiding  there  under  the  trees 
in  the  hearts  of  the  happy  children.  And  so,  sympa 
thizing,  I  told  these  children  over  and  over  again 
the  story  of  old  John  Brown  there." 

From  1860  to  1870,  Miller  was  chiefly  an  Ore- 
gonian,  though  he  made  many  excursions  from  his 
base.  We  shall  have  to  notice  one  more  interesting 
inconsistency  which  casts  a  suspicion  over  his  ac 
count  of  his  life  with  the  Indians.  In  the  introduc 
tion  to  the  Bear  Edition,  he  says  in  his  baffling 
summary  fashion,  without  dates,  that  on  his  return 
from  being  "with  Walker,"  he  "went  home,  went 
to  college  some,  taught  school  some,  studied  law  at 
home  some."  Now,  in  a  note  to  the  Bear  Edition 
(vol.  ii,  p.  185),  he  speaks  of  teaching  school  in 
1858  below  Fort  Vancouver,  "during  vacation  at 
Columbia  College,  the  forerunner  of  the  Oregon 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  205 

University";  and,  in  another  note  (vol.  i,  p.  170), 
he  says  that  he  wrote  "the  valedictory  class  poem" 
for  Columbia  College  in  1859.  It  thus  appears  that 
his  attendance  at  "Columbia  College"  falls  in  the 
period  when,  according  to  his  other  stories,  he  was 
engaged  in  his  last  desperate  efforts  to  establish  De 
Bloney's  "Mt.  Shasta  republic";  and  that  his  vale 
dictory  poem  was  apparently  delivered  in  the  year 
in  which  he  fled  from  Californian  justice  to  hide  in 
Washington  Territory. 

If  one  thinks  of  Miller  as  having  taken  a  regular 
college  course  ending  in  1859,  then  one  must  be 
prepared  to  dismiss  most  of  the  Mt.  Shasta  stories 
as  mythical;  and  doubtless  there  is  a  large  element 
of  fiction  in  them.  They  are  not,  however,  quite 
so  inconsistent  with  the  "college"  course  as  at  first 
sight  they  appear.  Eugene  City,  in  which  the  "col 
lege"  was  located,  was  not  settled  till  1854;  and 
the  institution,  with  its  "pleasant  campus,"  in  which 
the  poem  was  perhaps  delivered  five  years  later,  was 
nothing  more  than  a  small-town  high  school  or 
seminary.  And  Miller,  returning  from  California 
in  1858,  or  even  as  late  as  1859,  might,  after  a  very 
brief  instruction,  have  appeared  as  class  poet  in 
1859.  It  is,  moreover,  unfortunately  necessary  to 
regard  the  statements  about  his  own  life  made  to 
wards  the  close  of  his  literary  career  with  almost 
as  much  skepticism  as  those  which  he  made  near  its 
outset — and  for  an  interesting  reason.  In  his  last 
period,  as  the  seer  on  The  Hights,  Miller  desired 


206  AMERICANS 

to  be  regarded  as  an  authoritative  man  of  letters; 
consequently  he  minimized  his  frontier  upbringing 
and  magnified  his  education  and  general  culture. 
Furthermore,  he  ultimately  desired  to  be  regarded 
as  devoutly  American  and  as  intensely  pacifistic; 
consequently  he  touched  very  lightly  in  later  years 
the  period  when  he  was  a  secessionist,  he  skilfully 
hinted  here  and  there  that  the  stories  of  his  out 
lawry  were  mythical,  and  he  worked  over  his  poems, 
making  great  excisions  and  adding  new  passages, 
with  the  purpose  of  harmonizing  them  with  his 
declaration  that  he  would  rather  starve  than  be 
celebrated  as  the  poetic  glorifier  of  war.3  This  was 
obviously  a  difficult  task  in  the  case  of  the  bloody 
and  imperialistic  career  of  Walker. 

In  the  summer  of  1861  Miller  began  other  inter 
esting  adventures  which  are  better  attested.  At  this 
time  he  was  riding  Mossman  and  Miller's  pony  ex 
press,  carrying  letters  and  gold  dust  between  Walla 


* "  'The  Tale  of  the  Alcalde,'  he  says  in  his  note  in  the  Bear 
edition,  "has  been  a  fat  source  of  feeding  for  grimly  humorous 
and  sensational  writers,  who  long  ago  claimed  to  have  found  in  it 
the  story  of  my  early  life ;  and,  strangely  enough,  I  was  glad 
when  they  did  so,  and  read  their  stories  with  wild  delight.  I  don't 
know  why  I  always  encouraged  this  idea  of  having  been  an  outlaw, 
but  I  recall  that  when  Trelawny  told  me  that  Byron  was  more 
ambitious  to  be  thought  the  hero  of  his  wildest  poems  than  even 
to  be  King  of  Greece,  I  could  not  help  saying  to  myself,  as  Napo 
leon  said  to  the  thunders  preceding  Waterloo,  'We  are  of  accord.' 
The  only  serious  trouble  about  the  claim  that  I  made  the  fight  of 
life  up  the  ugly  steeps  from  a  hole  in  an  adobe  prison  wall  to  the 
foothills  of  Olympus,  instead  of  over  the  pleasant  campus  of  a 
college,  is  the  fact  that  'our  friends  the  enemy'  fixed  the  date  at 
about  the  same  time  in  which  I  am  on  record  as  reading  my  class 
poem  in  another  land." 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  207 

Walla,  Washington,  and  the  newly  opened  mines 
at  Millersburg,  in  Idaho.  Attracted  by  certain  con 
tributions  of  "Minnie  Myrtle"  appearing  in  the 
newspapers  of  his  pack,  he  wrote  to  her  and  had 
replies.  His  mining  ventures  yielded  him  enough  to 
enable  him  to  build  "a  beautiful  new  home"  for  his 
parents,  and  also  to  buy  a  newspaper.  In  1863  he 
began  to  edit  The  Democratic  Register  in  Eugene, 
Oregon,  and  he  avowed  southern  sympathies  which 
aroused  the  community.  Though  he  had  been 
brought  up  an  ardent  abolitionist  and  his  elder 
brother  John  had  entered  the  Northern  army,  he 
himself  had  imbibed,  in  his  "college,"  which  was 
tainted  with  disloyalty,  or  from  the  friends  of  Wal 
ker,  who  was  a  pro-slavery  man,  or  elsewhere — he 
had  imbibed  principles  and  sentiments  obnoxious  to 
the  aroused  Unionist  spirit  of  Oregon.  As  he  ex 
plained  it  in  Memorie  and  Rime,  "when  the  war 
came,  and  the  armies  went  down  desolating  the 
South,  then  with  that  fatality  that  has  always  fol 
lowed  me  for  getting  on  the  wrong  side,  siding  with 
the  weak,  I  forgot  my  pity  for  the  one  in  my  larger 
pity  for  the  other." 

His  entrance  into  journalism  brought  him  again 
to  the  attention  of  his  unknown  correspondent, 
"Minnie  Myrtle,"  who  was  then  living  in  a  mining 
and  lumber  camp  at  Port  Orford  by  the  sea,  not  far 
from  the  southern  boundary  of  Oregon.  Twenty 
years  later,  when  this  lady  died  in  New  York,  in 
May,  1883,  Miller  told  in  his  own  fashion  the  story 


208  AMERICANS 

of  his  brief  unhappy  relations  with  her.  Since  they 
made  a  turning  point  in  his  career  and  introduced 
into  his  poetry  additional  "Byronic"  notes,  let  us 
have  an  abridgement  of  his  own  version  of  the  affair 
as  set  forth  in  Memorie  and  Rime: 

When  I  came  down  from  the  mountains  and  em 
barked  in  journalism,  she  wrote  to  me,  and  her 
letters  grew  ardent  and  full  of  affection.  Then  I 
mounted  my  horse  and  rode  hundreds  of  miles 
through  the  valleys  and  over  the  mountains,  till  I 
came  to  the  sea,  at  Port  Orford,  then  a  flourishing 
mining  town,  and  there  first  saw  "Minnie  Myrtle." 
Tall,  dark,  and  striking  in  every  respect,  .  .  .  this 
first  Saxon  woman  I  had  ever  addressed  had  it  all 
her  own  way  at  once.  She  knew  nothing  at  all  of 
my  life,  except  that  I  was  an  expressman  and  coun 
try  editor.  I  knew  nothing  at  all  of  hers,  but  I 
found  her  with  kind,  good  parents,  surrounded  by 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  the  pet  and  spoiled  child 
of  the  mining  and  lumber  camp.  .  .  .  The  heart  of 
the  bright  and  merry  girl  was  brimming  full  of  ro 
mance,  hope,  and  happiness.  I  arrived  on  Thurs 
day.  On  Sunday  next  we  were  married!  Oh,  to 
what  else  but  ruin  and  regret  could  such  romantic 
folly  lead? 

"Procuring  a  horse  for  her" — for  she,  too,  was 
an  excellent  and  daring  rider — "we  set  out  at  once 
to  return  to  my  post,  far  away  over  the  mountains." 
After  a  week's  ride,  the  bridal  couple  reached  their 
intended  home  in  Eugene,  "but  only  to  find  that  my 
paper  had  been  suppressed  by  the  Government,  and 
we  resolved  to  seek  our  fortunes  in  San  Francisco. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  209 

But  we  found  neither  fortune  nor  friends  in  that 
great  city."  In  1863  Mrs.  Fremont  was  there,  and 
Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  and  Prentice  Mulford, 
and  Ina  Coolbrith.  Bret  Harte  was  writing  for 
The  Golden  Era.  The  nucleus  was  already  formed 
of  the  literary  group  which  Mark  Twain  joined  in 
1864,  and  which  launched  The  Calif  ornian  and  The 
Overland  Monthly.  Whether  at  this  time  Miller 
made  any  attempt  to  break  into  the  "western 
school"  does  not  appear.  If  he  did  so,  we  can 
understand  his  failure.  He  was  still  a  very  imma 
ture  writer,  though  Stoddard  records  that  he  did 
contribute  to  The  Golden  Era,  "from  the  backwood 
depths  of  his  youthful  obscurity."  But  coming  as  he 
did  in  the  midst  of  the  Civil  War  to  the  outskirts 
of  a  group  animated  by  Bret  Harte,  then  engaged 
in  writing  strongly  patriotic  verse  and  prose,  the 
editor  of  a  paper  which  had  just  been  suppressed 
for  disloyalty  could  hardly  have  expected  a  very 
cordial  reception. 

One  is  tempted  to  conjecture  that  Miller's  failure 
to  establish  a  literary  or  journalistic  connection  in 
the  city  may  perhaps  have  dashed  a  little  the  spirits 
of  his  bride.  At  any  rate,  he  says  that  even  while 
they  were  living  in  San  Francisco,  she  had  presenti 
ments  of  "wreck  and  storm  and  separation  for  us." 
If  thwarted  aspiration  for  more  literary  and  social 
life  than  she  had  enjoyed  in  the  lumber  camp  had 
stimulated  these  presentiments,  they  rrast  have  been 
strengthened  when  Joaquin  bought  a  band  of  cattle 


210  AMERICANS 

and  journeyed  with  his  wife  and  baby  to  a  new  min 
ing  camp  at  Canyon  City,  in  eastern  Oregon.  As 
for  him,  it  was  the  life  to  which  he  had  always 
been  accustomed,  and  he  threw  himself  into  the  task 
of  establishing  himself  with  unwonted  application  of 
his  restless  energy.  He  practised  law  among  the 
miners,  he  planted  the  first  orchard  in  the  land,  he 
led  in  his  third  Indian  campaign;  he  was  rewarded 
in  1866  by  election,  for  a  four-year  term,  as  judge 
of  the  Grant  County  court,  and  finally,  he  had  begun 
to  occupy  himself  seriously  with  poetry.  In  1868 
he  published  a  pamphlet  of  Specimens,  and  in  1869, 
at  Portland,  Oregon,  his  first  book:  "Joaquin,  Et 
AL,  by  Cincinnatus  H.  Miller" — dedicated  "To 
Maud."  4 

Ambition  and  a  multitude  of  business,  as  he  de 
picted  the  matter,  made  him  not  the  most  genial  of 
companions : 

Often  I  never  left  my  office  till  the  gray  dawn, 
after  a  day  of  toil  and  a  night  of  study.  My  health 
gave  way  and  I  was  indeed  old  and  thoughtful. 
Well,  all  this,  you  can  see,  did  not  suit  the  merry- 
hearted  and  spoiled  child  of  the  mines  at  all.  .  .  . 
She  became  the  spoiled  child  here  that  she  had  been 
at  her  father's,  and  naturally  grew  impatient  at  my 
persistent  toil  and  study.  But  she  was  good  all  the 
time.  .  .  .  Let  me  say  here,  once  for  all,  that  no 
man  or  woman  can  put  a  finger  on  any  stain  in  this 

4  The  contents  were :  "Joaquin,"  "Is  It  Worth  While  ?"  "Zanara," 
"In  Exile,"  "To  the  Bards  of  S.  F.  Bay,"  "Merinda,"  "Nepenthe," 
"Under  the  Oaks,"  "Dirge,"  "Vale,"  "Benoni,"  and  "Ultime." 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  211 

woman's  whole  record  of  life,  so  far  as  truth  and 
purity  go.  But  she  was  not  happy  here.  Impatient 
of  the  dull  monotony  of  the  exhausted  mining  camp, 
.  .  .  she  took  her  two  children  and  returned  to  her 
mother,  while  I  sold  the  little  home,  .  .  .  promis 
ing  to  follow  her,  yet  full  of  ambition  now  to  be 
elected  to  a  place  on  the  Supreme  Bench  of  the 
State.  .  .  .  She  had  been  absent  from  me  quite  a 
year,  when  ...  I  went  to  Portland,  seeking  the 
nomination  for  the  place  I  desired.  But  the  poor 
impatient  lady,  impulsive  as  always,  and  angry  that 
I  had  kept  so  long  away,  had  forwarded  papers 
from  her  home,  hundreds  of  miles  remote,  to  a 
lawyer  here,  praying  for  a  divorce.  This  so  put  me 
to  shame  that  I  abandoned  my  plans  and  resolved 
to  hide  my  head  in  Europe. 

To  "hide"  his  head  was  hardly  the  prime  object 
of  Miller's  first  trip  abroad,  nor,  except  by  a  wide 
poetic  license,  can  the  phrase  be  used  to  describe  his 
activities  there.  His  object  was  more  candidly  pre 
sented  in  a  line  of  his  Byronic  "Ultime,"  the  last 
poem  of  the  little  volume,  Joaquin,  Et  Al.,  published 
in  Portland  in  1869 — a  poem  written  as  if  in  pre 
monition  of  death : 

It  was  my  boy  ambition  to  be  read  beyond  the 
brine. 

As  soon  as  Joaquin,  Et  Al.  was  published,  what 
Miller  burned  for  was  literary  recognition  impos 
sible  on  the  Oregon  frontier.  In  March  of  1869, 
he  wrote  from  Portland  to  Charles  Warren  Stod- 
dard  to  solicit  his  interest  in  getting  the  book  ade- 


212  AMERICANS 

quately  noticed  in  The  Overland  Monthly,  which 
had  been  launched  two  months  before.  Stoddard 
was  absent  in  Hawaii;  but  in  January,  1870,  Bret 
Harte  gave  Joaquin  a  humorous  but  not  unfriendly 
salute  in  the  new  magazine:  "We  find  in  ' Joaquin, 
Et  Al.y  the  true  poetic  instinct,  with  a  natural  felic 
ity  of  diction  and  a  dramatic  vigour  that  are  good 
in  performance  and  yet  better  in  promise.  Of 
course,  Mr.  Miller  is  not  entirely  easy  in  harness, 
but  is  given  to  pawing  and  curvetting;  and  at  such 
times  his  neck  is  generally  clothed  with  thunder  and 
the  glory  of  his  nostrils  is  terrible." 

Following  this  recognition  from  the  leading  lit 
erary  periodical  of  the  Far  West,  Miller  came 
down  from  Oregon  to  embrace  the  bards  of  San 
Francisco  Bay — so  romantically  addressed  by  him 
in  Joaquin,  Et  AL — came  to  embrace  them  and  to 
be  embraced  by  them — "clad,"  says  Stoddard,  who 
had  now  returned  from  Hawaii,  "in  a  pair  of 
beaded  moccasins,  a  linen  'duster'  that  fell  nearly 
to  his  heels,  and  a  broad-brimmed  sombrero" 
Fresh,  breezy,  ingenuous,  Miller  exclaimed  at  once, 
"Well,  let  us  go  and  talk  with  the  poets."  Stoddard 
took  him  around  to  call  upon  Bret  Harte,  and  pre 
sented  him  also  to  the  most  lyrical  third  of  their 
trinity,  the  local  Sappho,  Ina  Coolbrith,  who  was 
at  once  impressive  and  sympathetic.  But  on  the 
whole,  literary  glory  at  the  Golden  Gate  was  paler 
than  his  expectations — "he  had  been  somewhat 
chilled  by  his  reception  in  the  metropolis."  Had 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  213 

he  really  desired  to  hide  his  head,  he  might  have 
accepted  Stoddard's  invitation  to  flee  away  with  him 
to  the  South  Seas.  Instead  of  doing  so,  Miller  ac 
cepted  a  wreath  of  laurel  from  Ina  Coolbrith,  to 
lay  on  the  tomb  of  Byron,  and,  in  midsummer  of 
1870,  "started  for  England  in  search  of  fame  and 
fortune." 

One  dwells  upon  this  first  return  to  the  old  world, 
because  now  one  sees  for  the  first  time  adequately 
manifested  the  literary  sensibility  and  the  imagina 
tive  yearning  which  for  years  had  been  secretly 
growing  in  the  heart  of  the  judge  of  Grant  County, 
Oregon.  Here  is  an  astounding  fact:  jottings  from 
a  diary,  preserved  in  Memorle  and  Rime,  prove  that 
this  backwoodsman  went  abroad,  not  with  the 
jaunty  insolence  of  Mark  Twain's  jolly  Philistines, 
but  rather  in  the  mood  of  Henry  James's  delicately 
nurtured  "passionate  pilgrims"  of  the  decade  fol 
lowing  the  Civil  War,  those  sentimental  and  aestheti 
cally  half-starved  young  Americans  who  in  the 
middle  years  of  the  last  century  flung  themselves 
with  tearful  joy  on  England  and  Europe  as  the  dear 
homeland  of  their  dreams.  There  is  a  touch,  some 
times  more  than  a  touch,  of  the  theatrical  in  his 
gesture;  but  there  is  an  unquestionable  depth  of 
sincere  feeling  animating  the  performance  as  a 
whole. 

There  is  even  a  touch  of  pathos — the  more  af 
fecting  because  he  himself,  for  once,  seems  hardly 
aware  of  it — in  the  memoranda  of  his  departure 


214  AMERICANS 

from  New  York.  He  bought  his  ticket  on  August 
10,  1870,  "second  class,  ship  Europa,  Anchor  Line, 
to  land  at  Glasgow;  and  off  to-morrow."  While 
waiting  for  the  sailing,  he  notes  that  he  has  tried 
in  vain  to  see  Horace  Greeley  and  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  but  has  got  some  leaves  from  a  tree  by  the 
door  of  Beecher's  church  "to  send  to  mother." 
There,  in  a  sentence,  was  his  unconscious  epitome 
of  what  the  higher  culture  of  the  American  metrop 
olis  had  to  offer  in  1870  to  a  passionate  pilgrim,  to 
a  romantic  poet:  the  editorials  of  a  great  journalist, 
the  sermons  of  a  great  preacher — a  rebuff  from  the 
office  of  the  one,  and  a  leaf  from  a  tree  of  the  other. 
A  note  of  the  voyage,  which  he  seems  to  have  found 
very  dreary,  reminds  us  that  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  was  then  in  progress:  "A  lot  of  Germans  go- 
i«g  home  to  fight  filled  the  ship ;  a  hard,  rough  lot, 
and  they  ate  like  hogs." 

Arrived  in  Scotland,  he  turns  his  back  on  com 
mercial  Glasgow,  and  makes  straight  for  the  haunts 
of  Burns.  On  September  10,  he  writes:  "God  bless 
these  hale  and  honest  Scotch  down  here  at  peace 
ful  Ayr.  .  .  .  One  man  showed  me  more  than  a 
hundred  books,  all  by  Ayrshire  poets,  and  some  of 
them  splendid!  I  have  not  dared  to  tell  any  one 
yet  that  I  too  hope  to  publish  a  book  of  verse.  .  .  . 
I  go  every  day  from  here  to  the  'Auld  Brig'  over  the 
Doon,  Highland  Mary's  grave,  and  Alloway's  auld 
haunted  kirk.  .  .  .  Poetry  is  in  the  air  here.  I 
am  working  like  a  beaver.  .  .  .  September  1 8 :  In 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  215 

the  sunset  to-day,  as  I  walked  out  for  the  last  time 
toward  the  tomb  of  Highland  Mary,  I  met  a  whole 
line  of  splendid  Scotch  lassies  with  sheaves  of  wheat 
on  their  heads  and  sickles  on  their  arms.  Their  feet 
were  bare,  their  legs  were  bare  to  the  knees.  Their 
great  strong  arms  were  shapely  as  you  can  conceive ; 
they  were  tall,  and  their  lifted  faces  were  radiant 
with  health  and  happiness.  I  stepped  aside  in  the 
narrow  road  to  enjoy  the  scene  and  let  them  pass. 
They  were  going  down  the  sloping  road  toward 
some  thatched  cottages  by  the  sea,  I  towards  the 
mountains.  How  beautiful!  I  uncovered  my  head 
as  I  stepped  respectfully  aside.  But  giving  the  road 
to  women  here  seems  to  be  unusual.  ..."  Having 
paid  his  devotion  to  Burns,  his  "brother,"  he  goes 
on  into  the  Scott  country,  wades  the  Tweed,  and 
spends  a  night  in  Dryburg  Abbey. 

Thence  he  proceeds,  with  ever  more  reverential 
mood,  to  Nottingham,  where  he  lays  his  western 
laurel  on  the  tomb  of  his  "master,"  Byron,  and 
bargains  with  the  caretaker  "to  keep  the  wreath 
there  as  long  as  he  lives  (or  I  have  sovereigns)." 
"O  my  poet!"  he  cries,  "worshipped  where  the 
world  is  glorious  with  the  fire  and  the  blood  of 
youth!  Yet  here  in  your  own  home — ah,  well!" 
The  parallelism  between  Byron's  fate  and  his  own, 
on  which  he  broods  in  Nottingham,  stimulates  him 
to  fresh  poetical  efforts.  On  September  28,  the 
record  runs: 


216  AMERICANS 

Have  written  lots  of  stuff  here.  I  have  been 
happy  here.  I  have  worked  and  not  thought  of 
the  past.  But  to-morrow  I  am  going  down  to  Hull, 
cross  the  Channel,  and  see  the  French  and  Germans 
fight.  For  I  have  stopped  work  and  begun  to  look 
back.  ...  I  see  the  snow-peaks  of  Oregon  all 
the  time  when  I  stop  work.  .  .  .  And  then  the 
valley  at  the  bottom  of  the  peaks;  the  people  there; 
the  ashes  on  the  hearth;  the  fire  gone  out.  .  .  . 
The  old  story  of  Orpheus  in  hell  has  its  awful 
lesson.  I,  then,  shall  go  forward  and  never  look 
back  any  more.  Hell,  I  know,  is  behind  me.  There 
cannot  be  worse  than  hell  before  me.  .  .  .  Yet  for 
all  this  philosophy  and  this  setting  the  face  forward, 
the  heart  turns  back. 

After  a  glimpse  of  the  war,  he  began  on  Novem 
ber  2,  1870,  his  adventures  in  London — which  he 
found  delightfully  different  from  New  York — by 
walking  straight  to  Westminster  Abbey,  guided 
only  by  the  spirit  in  his  feet.  Later,  he  continued 
his  passionate  pilgrimage  by  looking  up  the  haunts 
of  Washington  Irving  and  Bayard  Taylor,  and  he 
lived  for  a  while  in  Camberwell,  because  Browning 
had  lived  there.  In  February,  1871,  he  was  lodged 
in  a  garret  of  the  poet  Cowley's  house,  "right  back 
of  the  Abbey,"  looking  out  on  Virginia  creepers 
planted  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  listening  to  the 
sound  of  the  city's  bells.  Refreshed  from  his  bath 
in  the  stream  of  poetic  tradition  and  "atmospheri 
cally"  inspired,  Miller  made  a  little  book  called 
Pacific  Poems,  containing  "Arazonian"  (sic)  and 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  217 

his  drama  "Oregonia,"  and  having  printed,  at  his 
own  expense,  a  hundred  copies,  scoured  the  city 
seeking  a  publisher.  But  the  publishers  would  have 
none  of  it.  Murray,  "son  of  the  great  Murray, 
Byron's  friend,"  received  him,  indeed,  and  showed 
him  many  pictures  of  Byron,  but  rejected  the  prof 
fered  opportunity  to  become  Joaquin's  publisher, 
saying,  with  definitive  uplifted  finger:  "Aye,  now, 
don't  you  know  poetry  won't  do?  Poetry  won't  do, 
don't  you  know?" 

In  other  quarters  he  met  with  better  fortune. 
Knocking  at  the  door  of  Punch,  as  a  nameless 
American,  he  was  cordially  received  by  "my  first, 
firmest  friend  in  London,"  a  man  in  whose  arms 
Artemus  Ward  had  died, — Tom  Hood,  son  of  the 
famous  humorist.  By  March,  1871,  he  got  his 
Pacific  Poems  to  the  reviews  and  into  a  kind  of 
private  circulation  without  a  publisher.  Almost  at 
once  both  book  and  author  began  to  catch  the  fancy 
of  the  London  literary  tasters,  who  are  always 
hospitably  inclined  to  real  curiosities  from  overseas, 
and  welcome  a  degree  of  crudity  in  a  transatlantic 
writer  as  evidence  that  he  is  genuinely  American. 
By  the  end  of  the  month,  "Arazonian"  was  attrib 
uted  by  the  Saint  James  Gazette  to  Robert  Brown 
ing;  and,  notes  the  diary,  "Walter  Thornbury, 
Dickens'  dear  friend,  and  a  better  poet  than  I  can 
hope  to  be,  has  hunted  me  up,  and  says  big  things 
of  the  'Pacific  Poems'  in  the  London  Graphic" 
There  are,  moreover,  "two  splendid  enthusiasts 


218  AMERICANS 

from  Dublin  University."  And,  finally,  Tom  Hood 
has  introduced  him  to  the  society  poet  of  the  city, 
who,  in  turn,  has  given  him  letters  "to  almost  every 
body";  and  so  he  is  socially  launched.  With  this 
encouragement  and  backing,  he  attacks  the  publish 
ers  again,  this  time  successfully.  By  April,  1871, 
Longmans  has  brought  out  his  Songs  of  the  Sierras, 
and  Miller's  "boy  ambition"  is  accomplished. 

At  one  stride  he  had  stepped  from  backwoods 
obscurity  into  the  full  noontide  of  glory;  and  it  is 
not  strange  that  the  remembrance  of  his  English 
reception  dazzled  him  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  It 
is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  this  acclaim 
was  instantaneous,  enthusiastic,  and  unanimous — 
"over-generous,"  he  called  it,  years  later,  when  he 
published  in  the  Bear  Edition  some  thirty  pages  of 
appreciations  from  the  English  press,  including  The 
Spectator,  The  Athenaeum,  The  Saturday  Review, 
The  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  The  Illustrated  London 
News,  The  Academy,  The  Evening  Standard,  The 
Westminster  Review,  The  Dark  Blue,  The  London 
Sunday  Times,  Chamber's  Journal,  Frazer's  Maga 
zine,  The  Evening  Post,  The  Globe,  The  Morning 
Post,  and  others.  These  are  largely  concerned  with 
his  first  volume,  Songs  of  the  Sierras.  The  re 
viewers,  in  general,  touch  lightly  upon  his  obvious 
inequalities,  blemishes,  slips  in  grammar,  and  faults 
in  metre;  some  of  them  apologize  slightly  for  his 
frontier  culture;  more  recognize  it  boldly  as  the 
source  of  his  power,  and  proceed  to  speak  in  glow- 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  219 

ing  terms  of  his  freshness  of  theme  and  treatment, 
of  his  tropical  color,  his  myth-making  power,  his 
fluent,  rapid,  and  melodious  verse,  and  "the  su 
preme  independence,  the  spontaneity,  the  all-per 
vading  passion,  the  unresting  energy,  and  the  prod 
igal  wealth  of  imagery  which  stamp  the  poetry 
before  us." 

They  did  not  hesitate,  this  chorus  of  reviewers, 
to  tell  him  that  his  poetry  was  the  most  important 
that  had  ever  come  out  of  America.  Nor  did  they 
stop  with  this  equivocal  praise.  The  Athenaum 
found  him  like  Browning  in  his  humor  and  in  the 
novelty  of  his  metaphors.  The  Saturday  Review 
dwelt  on  his  Byronic  qualities,  and  remarked  in  him 
"a  ring  of  genuineness  which  is  absent  from  Byron." 
The  Westminster  Review  thought  that  he  reminded 
one  of  Whitman,  with  the  coarseness  left  out.  And 
The  Academy  gravely  declared  that  "there  is  an 
impassable  gap  between  the  alien  couleur  locale  of 
even  so  great  a  poet  as  Victor  Hugo  in  such  a  work 
as  Les  Orientates,  and  the  native  recipiency  of  one 
like  our  California  author,  whose  very  blood  and 
bones  are  related  to  the  things  he  describes,  and 
from  whom  a  perception  and  a  knowledge  so  ex 
tremely  unlike  our  own  are  no  more  separable  than 
his  eye,  and  his  brain." 

In  the  wake  of  the  journalistic  ovation,  social 
invitations  came  in  upon  the  poet  faster  than  he 
could  accept  or  answer  them.  Among  those  which 
he  had  pushed  aside  were  three  letters  signed 


220  AMERICANS 

"Dublin."  His  Irish  friends  discovered  these  and 
explained  that  they  were  from  the  Archbishop 
(Trench).  "At  'Dublin's'  breakfast,"  says  Miller, 
"I  met  Robert  Browning,  Dean  Stanley,  Lady  Au 
gusta,  a  lot  more  ladies,  and  a  duke  or  two,  and 
after  breakfast  'Dublin'  read  to  me — with  his  five 
beautiful  daughters  grouped  about — from  Brown 
ing,  Arnold,  Rossetti,  and  others,  till  the  day  was 
far  spent."  The  other  great  feast  of  the  season 
was  an  all-night  dinner  with  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
at  which  "the  literary  brain"  of  London  was  pres 
ent.  As  he  recalled  the  event,  with  an  intoxication 
of  delight,  later  in  the  summer:  "These  giants  of 
thought,  champions  of  the  beautiful  earth,  passed 
the  secrets  of  all  time  and  all  lands  before  me  like 
a  mighty  panorama.  .  .  .  If  I  could  remember 
and  write  down  truly  and  exactly  what  these  men 
said,  I  would  have  the  best  and  the  greatest  book 
that  was  ever  written." 

What  he  recorded  of  the  conversation  is  not  over- 
poweringly  impressive;  but  from  this  rather  bewil 
dering  contact  with  the  pre-Raphaelite  group  Miller 
departed  with  a  vivid  conviction  that  he,  too,  was 
above  all  else  a  lover  of  the  beautiful,  and  he  car 
ried  away  a  strong  impression,  which  markedly 
affected  his  next  volume  of  poems,  that  beauty  is 
resident  in  "alliteration  and  soft  sounds."  Perhaps, 
however,  the  most  noteworthy  utterance  which  he 
preserved  was  his  own  reply  to  a  question  of  Ros- 
setti's: 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  221 

"Now,  what  do  you  call  poetry?"  and  he  turned 
his  great  Italian  eyes  tenderly  to  where  I  sat  at  his 
side. 

"To  me  a  poem  must  be  a  picture,"  I  answered. 

There  was  more  than  a  drop  of  bitterness  min 
gled  in  the  joy  of  his  English  welcome.  With  the 
cup  raised  to  his  lips,  he  wrote  in  his  diary,  "I  was 
not  permitted  to  drink."  In  the  midsummer  of  this 
most  triumphal  year,  he  received  news  that  his  sister 
had  died.  He  returned  to  the  United  States,  only 
in  time  to  attend  the  death-bed  of  his  elder  brother 
in  Pennsylvania.  Re-visiting  his  parents  in  Oregon, 
he  found  his  mother  in  broken  health  and  failing 
mind.  Furthermore,  the  American  reception  of  his 
poems  lacked  the  warmth  of  the  English  cordiality. 
The  traditional  superciliousness  of  the  East  towards 
the  West  and  a  resentful  unwillingness  to  have  this 
uncouth  frontiersman  accepted  abroad  as  a  leading 
or  even  a  significant  representative  of  American 
letters — these  not  altogether  unfamiliar  notes  are 
strident  in  a  review  in  the  New  York  Nation  in 
1871:  "It  is  the  'sombreros'  and  'scrapes'  and 
'gulches,'  we  suppose,  and  the  other  Californian  and 
Arizonian  properties,  which  have  caused  our  Eng 
lish  friends  to  find  in  Mr.  Miller  a  truly  American 
poet.  He  is  Mr.  William  Rossetti's  latest  discov 
ery.  We  trust,  however,  that  we  have  no  monopoly 
of  ignorance  and  presumption  and  taste  for  Byron- 
ism.  In  other  climes,  also,  there  have  been 
Firmilians,  and  men  need  not  be  born  in  California 


222  AMERICANS 

to  have  the  will  in  excess  of  the  understanding 
and  the  understanding  ill-informed.  There  are 
people  of  all  nationalities  whom  a  pinch  more 
brains  and  a  trifle  more  of  diffidence  would  not 
hurt." 

The  chilliness  of  American  literary  criticism  was 
not  all,  nor  perhaps  the  worst,  that  Miller  had  to 
face  on  his  return  to  the  United  States.  During  his 
absence  in  Europe,  he  had  been  accused  at  home, 
and  not  without  a  basis  in  fact,  of  deserting  his 
wife.  His  celebrity  as  author  of  Songs  of  the 
Sierras  gave  newspaper  value  to  the  story.  And  in 
the  fall  of  1871,  "Minnie  Myrtle"  made  the  entire 
subject  a  topic  for  editorial  comment,  both  at  home 
and  abroad,  by  corroborating  the  story  and  then 
proceeding,  in  the  spirit  of  magnanimity  or  of  irony 
or  of  publicity,  to  justify  the  poet.  Early  in  1872, 
The  Saturday  Review  summarized  Mrs.  Miller's 
communication  to  the  American  press,  and  discussed 
it  at  length,  with  elaborate  comparison  of  the  classi 
cal  case  of  Lord  Byron.  From  this  discussion  the 
following  extract  will  suffice  for  our  purposes: 

The  public,  she  holds  [by  her  own  act  belying 
the  contention]  has  nothing  to  do  with  Mr.  Miller 
except  as  a  poet,  and  has  no  right  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  his  conduct  as  a  husband  or  father;  and  in  the 
next  place,  poets  are  different  from  other  people, 
.and  their  lives  must  be  judged,  if  at  all,  by  a  differ 
ent  standard.  Mr.  Miller,  we  are  informed,  "felt 
that  he  was  gifted,  and  his  mind  being  of  a  fine, 
poetic  structure,  and  his  brain  very  delicately  organ- 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  223 

ized,  the  coarse  and  practical  duties  of  providing 
for  a  family,  and  the  annoyance  of  children,  con 
flicted  with  his  dreams  and  literary  whims."  It  had 
been  for  years  his  ambition  to  go  to  Europe  and 
become  famous.  Time  and  money  were  of  course 
necessary  to  his  project,  and  when  he  wrote  his  wife 
that  he  should  be  absent  for  five  or  six  years,  and 
that  she  must  not  expect  to  hear  from  him  often, 
she  thought  it  would  be  better  to  release  him  at 
once  from  domestic  obligations.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Miller 
assures  us  that  she  fully  sympathized  with  her  hus 
band's  projects,  and  that  she  believes  them  to  be 
justified  by  their  practical  results.  "Mr.  Miller," 
she  says,  "felt  that  he  had  gifts  of  the  mind,  and 
if  his  system  of  economy  was  rigid  and  hard  to 
endure,  it  was  at  least  a  success ;  and  if  he  needed 
all  his  money  to  carry  out  his  plans,  I  am  satisfied 
that  he  thus  used  it.  ...  As  we  are  both  mortals, 
it  would  be  affectation  in  me  were  I  to  profess  to 
take  upon  myself  all  the  blame,  but  I  ask  to  bear 
my  full  share.  .  .  .  Good  sometimes  comes  of  evil. 
.  .  .  Our  separation  and  sorrows  produced  the 
poems  of  'Myrrh'  and  'Even  So.' ' 

It  was  at  about  this  point  in  his  career  that  Miller 
proved  the  adage  about  a  prophet  in  his  own 
country. 

And  now  perhaps  he  did  seriously  consider  hid 
ing  his  head  for  a  time  in  Europe — hiding  it  in  the 
Byronic  fashion.  From  early  in  1872  till  1875 
"Childe"  Miller  wandered  extensively,  returning  to 
Europe  with  a  wide  detour  by  way  of  South  Amer 
ica  and  the  Near  East.  From  scattered  references 
one  gathers  that  he  made  acquaintance  with  the 


224  AMERICANS 

Emperor  of  Brazil,  that  he  went  down  the  Danube 
and  up  the  Nile,  saw  Athens  and  Constantinople, 
visited  Palestine,  and  was  "in  and  about  the  tomb 
of  buried  empires  and  forgotten  kings."  These 
wanderings,  impossible  to  trace  in  detail,  were  in 
terrupted  and  punctuated  by  considerable  periods 
of  steady  literary  work,  by  visits  to  England,  by  a 
sojourn  in  Italy,  and  by  publications — all  of  which 
can  be  dated  with  tolerable  accuracy. 

Beside  the  new  edition  of  Songs  of  the  Sierras, 
he  published  in  1873  the  first  reflection  of  these 
travels  in  Songs  of  the  Sun-Lands.  Of  this,  a  re 
viewer  in  the  Athenaeum  said:  "Mr.  Miller's  muse 
in  this,  its  second  flight,  has  taken  the  same  direc 
tion  as  in  its  first  essay,  but,  upon  the  whole,  we 
think,  with  a  stronger  wing."  In  the  prelude  to 
the  first  long  poem  in  the  book,  Miller  cries  with 
fine  bravado  that  "the  passionate  sun  and  the  reso 
lute  sea"  have  been  his  masters,  "and  only  these." 
So  far  as  the  prosodical  qualities  of  this  collection 
are  concerned,  this  announcement  is  amusing,  be 
cause  nowhere  else  in  his  work  does  he  show  himself 
so  obviously  the  "sedulous  ape"  of  his  English  con 
temporaries.  The  volume  is  dedicated  to  the  Ros- 
settis;  in  "Isles  of  the  Amazons"  he  is  affected  by 
the  stanza  of  "In  Memoriam"  and  he  also  echoes 
Mrs.  Browning;  in  "Sleep  That  Was  Not  Sleep"  6 
he  attempts  the  Browningesque  dramatic  mono- 


5  A  revision  of  "Zanoni"  in  Joaquin,  Et  Al. 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  225 

logue;  remembering  the  Rossetti  dinner  of  1871,  he 
works  on  the  theory  that  "a  poem  must  be  a  pic 
ture,"  and  he  is  everywhere  studious  of  "alliteration 
and  soft  sounds" ;  finally  in  the  Palestinian  sequence 
called  "Olive  Leaves,"  the  influence  of  Swinburne 
has  quite  transformed  and  disguised  the  sound  of 
his  voice : 

With  incense  and  myrrh  and  sweet  spices, 

Frankincense  and  sacredest  oil 
In  ivory,  chased  with  devices 

Cut  quaint  and  in  serpentine  coil; 
Heads  bared,  and  held  down  to  the  bosom; 

Brows  massive  with  wisdom  and  bronzed; 
Beards  white  as  the  white  may  in  blossom, 

And  borne  to  the  breast  and  beyond, — 
Came  the  Wise  of  the  East,  bending  lowly 

On  staffs,  with  their  garments  girt  round 
With  girdles  of  hair,  to  the  Holy 

Child  Christ,  in  their  sandals. 

Despite  all  this  mimicry  in  the  manner,  the  stuff 
in  the  Songs  of  the  Sun-Lands  is,  in  great  measure, 
Miller's  own.  In  "Isles  of  the  Amazons"  he  con 
ceives  himself  as  a  scout  of  the  imagination,  a  Kit 
Carson  of  poetry,  who  has  carried  his  banner  from 
Oregon  and  the  Sierras  to  plant  it  in  South  Amer 
ican  islands  by  a  mighty  unsung  river.  His  hero, 
a  singing  warrior  fleeing  from  strife  to  seek  a  Uto 
pian  peace  and  felicity,  is  once  more  a  kind  of 
self-projection.  "From  Sea  to  Sea"  is  a  poetical 
reminiscence  of  a  transcontinental  journey  by  the 
new  Pacific  Railway.  By  the  Sundown  Seas,  which 


226  AMERICANS 

he  later  cut  up  into  its  constituent  pictures,  sings 
the  glories  of  Oregon  and  the  emigrants.  In  "Olive 
Leaves,"  his  garland  from  Palestine,  he  begins  a 
peculiarly  American  reappropriation  of  Christianity 
and  an  assimilation  of  it  to  his  growing  humani 
tarian  sentiment.  And  "Fallen  Leaves"  are  for  the 
most  part  memories  of  the  West.  So  that  if  he 
does  not  exhibit  any  very  daring  unconventionalities 
in  form,  he  does  employ  his  forms  with  a  good  deal 
of  flexibility  in  imaginatively  molding  the  raw  stuff 
of  American  experience. 

In  1873,  also,  Miller  published  in  France  and 
England  the  most  original  and  the  most  poetical  of 
all  his  books  in  prose,  and,  on  the  whole,  perhaps 
the  most  interesting  book  that  he  ever  produced, 
Life  Among  the  Modocs,  which  circulated  in  trans 
lations,  later  editions,  and  abridgments,  pirated  or 
otherwise,  under  various  titles — as  Unwritten  His 
tory,  Scenes  de  la  Vie  des  Mineurs  et  des  Indiens  de 
California,  Paquita,  My  Own  Story,  and  My  Life 
Among  the  Indians.  In  1872  and  1873  the  Modoc 
Indians  were  attracting  the  attention  of  the  public 
by  their  stubborn  resistance  to  the  government's 
attempt  to  move  them  from  their  old  lands  to  a  new 
reservation.  In  the  course  of  this  resistance  their 
killing  of  two  peace  commissioners  naturally  excited 
popular  indignation.  But  in  Miller,  instinctively 
sympathetic  with  the  under  dog,  the  last  hopeless 
stand  of  this  warlike  tribe,  which  he  had  known 
in  his  boyhood,  appealed  strongly  to  the  humani- 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  227 

tarian  sentiment,  stirred  up  old  memories,  and 
aroused  the  imagination.  He  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  at  least  one  of  his  "campaigns,"  fought  against 
them;  but  now,  as  a  poet  and  Utopian,  he  is  all 
on  their  side,  he  embraces  their  cause,  he  speaks 
from  their  point  of  view,  he  makes  himself  one  of 
them. 

In  the  introduction  to  the  Bear  Edition,  he  gives 
this  brief  account  of  the  origin  of  the  book:  "Hav 
ing  met  the  Prince,  on  a  visit  from  Nicaragua  at 
the  time,  he  helped  me  to  recall  our  life  among  the 
Modocs,  adding  such  romance  of  his  own  as  he 
chose."  Elsewhere  he  acknowledges  the  collabora 
tion  of  Prentice  Mulford.  How  much  is  due  to  the 
influence  of  these  collaborators  one  cannot  say,  but 
there  is  a  continuity  of  narrative  and  dramatic  and 
idyllic  interest  in  the  tale  unequalled  in  Miller's 
other  prose  fiction.  The  authors  enter  with  genu 
ine  enthusiasm  into  the  exhibition  of  the  white  man's 
inhumanity,  the  virtues  of  the  "noble  savage,"  the 
chivalry  of  the  Prince,  the  heroic  fidelity  of  Paquita, 
the  yellow-haired  poetic  renegade  and  his  dusky 
bride,  and  the  romantic  and  melancholy  charm  of 
life  on  the  forested  slopes  of  Mt.  Shasta.  There 
is  a  wavering  thread  of  autobiographical  fact  run 
ning  through  the  romance, 'but  the  romance  is  here 
far  more  significant  than  the  thread  of  fact;  all 
that  Miller,  as  a  poetic  dreamer,  longed  to  have 
been,  all  that  he  could  not  be,  inextricably  fused  with 
what  he  was,  is  here  projected,  beautifully,  by  his 


228  AMERICANS 

imagination.  He  so  long  encouraged  the  acceptance 
of  the  book  as  "history"  that  perhaps  in  his  later 
years  he  actually  lost  the  ability,  never  notable  in 
him,  to  distinguish  what  he  had  done  from  what 
he  had  dreamed.  In  1874  this  book,  with  the  title 
Unwritten  History:  Life  Amongst  the  Modocs,  was 
brought  out  in  a  subscription  edition  by  the  Amer 
ican  Publishing  Company,  and  in  the  advertising 
pages  of  this  edition  is  third  in  a  list  beginning  with 
Mark  Twain's  The  Gilded  Age  and  Josh  Billings's 
Everybody's  Friend.  This  will  suggest  to  those  who 
remember  the  American  Publishing  Company  the 
sort  and  size  of  the  audience  that  Miller  was  ad 
dressing  in  the  middle  'seventies. 

In  Memorie  and  Rime,  Miller  says  that  he  re 
turned  to  London  in  November,  1874,  from  his  long 
wanderings  in  Europe.  Apparently,  however,  he 
had  returned  to  England  in  the  preceding  year,  per 
haps  partly  to  enjoy  the  reclame  of  his  two  new 
books.  In  1873,  at  any  rate,  he  made  his  acquaint 
ance  with  that  poet  and  patron  of  the  arts  and 
great  organizer  of  literary  breakfasts,  Lord  Hough- 
ton.  In  Reid's  Life  of  Lord  Houghton  little  record 
remains  of  this  friendship,  except  a  letter  of  August 
5,  1873,  addressed  to  Gladstone,  in  which  Miller  is 
commended  as  "most  interesting  as  poet  and  man; 
I  have  known  and  asked  nothing  as  to  his  private 
life."  Augustus  Hare  (The  Story  of  My  Life,  vol. 
iv)  makes  a  supercilious  reference  to  the  poet's 
appearance  at  one  of  these  breakfasts:  "Joaquin 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  229 

Miller  would  have  been  thought  insufferably  vulgar 
if  he  had  not  been  a  notoriety:  as  it  was,  everyone 
paid  court  to  him."  But  various  letters  and  refer 
ences  in  Traubel's  With  Walt  Whitman  in  Camden 
show  that  Miller  returned  Lord  Houghton's  cour 
tesies  in  America,  in  1875,  and  attempted  to  bring 
about  a  meeting  between  his  English  friend  and 
Whitman.  Furthermore,  Miller  speaks  of  travel 
ing  with  Lord  Houghton  in  Greece;  and  in  a  note 
of  the  Bear  Edition  he  gives  interesting  hints  at  the 
sort  of  figure  that  he  himself  made  in  English 
country  life: 

Born  to  the  saddle  and  bred  by  a  chain  of  events 
to  ride  with  the  wind  until  I  met  the  stolid  riders 
of  England,  I  can  now  see  how  it  was  that  Anthony 
Trollope,  Lord  Houghton  and  others  of  the  saddle 
and  "meet"  gave  me  ready  place  in  their  midst.  .  .  . 
In  all  our  hard  riding  I  never  had  a  scratch.  One 
morning  Trollope  hinted  that  my  immunity  was  due 
to  my  big  Spanish  saddle,  which  I  had  brought  from 
Mexico  City.  I  threw  my  saddle  on  the  grass  and 
rode  without  so  much  as  a  blanket.  And  I  rode 
neck  to  neck;  and  then  left  them  all  behind  and 
nearly  every  one  unhorsed.  Prince  Napoleon  was 
of  the  party  that  morning;  and  as  the  gentlemen 
pulled  themselves  together  on  the  return  he  kept  by 
my  side,  and  finally  proposed  a  tour  through  Notts 
and  Sherwood  Forest  on  horseback.  And  so  it  fell 
out  that  we  rode  together  much. 

With  so  much  cordiality  manifesting  itself  abroad 
and  so  little  at  home,  it  is  not  strange  that  Miller, 


230  AMERICANS 

after  this  second  visit  to  England,  should  have  en 
tertained  for  a  time  the  notion  of  fixing  his  residence 
in  a  foreign  land.  It  behooved  him,  furthermore, 
as  a  faithful  follower  of  Lord  Byron,  to  dwell  in 
Italy.  He  says,  with  customary  indefiniteness  as  to 
dates,  that,  in  the  footsteps  of  his  hero,  he  "lived 
long  enough  at  Genoa  to  find  that  his  life  there, 
along  with  the  Shelleys,  was  simple,  sincere,  and 
clean.  From  Genoa  I  went  to  Florence,  as  the  guest 
of  our  Consul  General,  Lorimer  Graham.  I  wanted 
to  live  with  Mr.  Graham  because  he  and  his  most 
amiable  lady  lived  in  the  house  occupied  by  Byron 
and  the  Shelleys,  when  they  made  their  home  in 
Florence.  At  Venice,  under  the  guidance  of  Brown 
ing,  who  had  left  Florence  to  live  in  this  latter  place, 
after  the  death  of  his  gifted  wife,  I  found  only  the 
same  story  of  industry,  sobriety  and  devotion  to 
art."  Charles  Warren  Stoddard  gives  a  glimpse  of 
Miller's  secretive  life  in  Rome,  picturing  him  driv 
ing  out  with  the  "Pink  Countess,"  and  declares  that 
Miller's  Italian  novel,  The  One  Fair  Woman,  1876, 
with  its  epigraphs  from  Byron,  Browning,  Swin 
burne,  and  Hay,  "embodies"  much  of  Miller's  Ro 
man  life,  and  is  "one  of  the  truest  tales  he  ever 
told."  Additional  light  on  this  period  is  thrown  by 
Songs  of  Italy,  1878,  a  collection  manifestly  pro 
duced  under  the  influence  of  Browning.  The  Ship 
in  the  Desert,  published  in  book  form  in  1875,  is 
preceded  by  an  eloquent  prose  inscription  to  his 
parents,  dated  August,  1874,  at  Lake  Como.  At 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  231 

about  this  time,  Miller  bought  some  land  near 
Naples  and,  in  company  with  an  English  poet,  medi 
tated  settling  there;  but  malarial  fever  attacked 
them  both,  his  friend  died,  and  the  Italian  chapter 
of  his  life  was  ended. 

In  November,  1875,  Miller  dated  at  Chicago  an 
introductory  allegorical  poem,  prefixed  to  Mary 
Murdock  Mason's  little  Italian  novel,  Mae  Mad 
den,  published  in  1876.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
decade  he  roved  widely,  as  was  his  wont,  but  this  is, 
in  general,  the  period  of  his  experiments  at  living 
in  eastern  cities,  including  Boston,  New  York,  and 
Washington,  where  he  built  himself  a  log  cabin, 
and,  in  his  frontier  costume,  became  the  picturesque 
publicity  man  for  the  "Western  school."  Bret 
Harte  and  Mark  Twain,  now  at  the  height  of  their 
production,  were  creating  a  lively  demand  for  the 
tales  of  the  pioneers;  and  Miller  perhaps  perceived 
that  if  he  was  to  have  his  due  profit  of  the  popular 
interest  he  must  renounce  his  Italian  and  Oriental 
inclinations  and  return  to  his  native  fields.  In  1876, 
at  any  rate,  he  published  First  Families  of  the 
Sierras,  a  prose  tale  of  the  Forty-Niners,  marked 
by  that  chivalric  sentiment  for  women  and  by  that 
idealization  of  the  noble  men  in  red  shirts,  which 
are  distinctive  "notes"  of  this  literary  movement. 
In  The  Baroness  of  New  York,  1877,  a  long  ro 
mantic  medley  in  verse,  he  dismally  failed  in  his  at 
tempt  to  extend  the  adventures  of  his  western 
heroine  into  the  society  of  the  metropolis.  A 


232  AMERICANS 

presentation  copy  of  this  book,  now  in  the  posses 
sion  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  bears  the  au 
thor's  own  veracious  comment  that  it  "isn't  worth 
a  damn."  Though  he  salvaged  a  portion  of  it  in 
"The  Sea  of  Fire,"  the  original  title  disappeared 
from  his  collective  edition.  Soon  after  his  return 
to  America,  he  began  to  be  visited  by  dramatic  aspi 
rations;  and  in  1881  he  achieved  considerable  suc 
cess  with  The  Danites  in  the  Sierras.  The  three 
other  plays  which  he  preserved — Forty-Nine,  Tally- 
Ho,  and  An  Oregon  Idyl — are  like  The  Danites  in 
presenting  incidents  in  the  story  of  the  frontier.  In 
1881,  he  published  also  The  Shadows  of  Shasta,  a 
prose  tale  anticipating  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's  Ra- 
mona  in  indignation  at  our  treatment  of  the  Indians. 
In  1884  falls  the  interesting  but  very  fragmentary 
autobiographical  miscellany  called  Memorie  and 
Rime.  With  The  Destruction  of  Gotham,  1886,  a 
sensational  novel  of  class-conflict  in  New  York  City, 
Miller  somewhat  significantly  terminated  his  search 
for  fortune  and  glory  in  the  Eastern  states. 

He  had  been  a  sentimental  pilgrim  in  England,  a 
poetic  refugee  in  Italy,  and  a  picturesque  visitor — 
an  ambassador  from  the  Sierras — even  in  New 
York  and  Washington.  Though  he  had  enjoyed 
playing  all  these  parts,  perhaps  by  1886  he  felt  that 
he  and  his  public  were  beginning  to  lose  their  zest 
for  one  another.  Furthermore  he  had  now  married 
again  and  at  least  entertained  the  thought  of  settling 
down.  The  loss  of  considerable  money  in  Wall 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  233 

Street  speculations  had  shaken  his  faith  in  "capital 
istic  society"  and  had  weakened  the  Babylonian  at 
tractions  of  metropolitan  life.  He  remembered  the 
mountains  and  the  seas  of  the  West.  He  remem 
bered  also  Sir  Walter  Scott's  castle  and  estate  at 
Abbotsford  as  a  general  model  of  the  fashion  in 
which  a  great  poet  should  live.  Mingled  with  these 
memories,  in  the  background  of  his  mind  there  was 
a  curious  accumulation  of  Utopian  and  Arcadian 
dreams  which  from  his  boyhood  he  had  vaguely 
desired  to  realize.  And  so  at  last  the  prophet 
returned  to  his  own  country,  and,  entering  upon  a 
tract  of  land  upon  the  hills  looking  over  Oakland 
to  San  Francisco  Bay,  he  built  there  a  little  wooden 
house  for  his  wife,  which  he  called  The  Abbey  (com 
memorating  at  once  her  name  and  Dryburgh  and 
Newstead  Abbeys),  a  second  cottage  for  his  old 
mother,  a  "bower"  for  his  daughter,  and  a  little 
guest-house  for  whatever  visitor,  white,  black,  or 
yellow,  cared  to  occupy  it.  There,  too,  he  planted 
thousands  of  trees  in  the  shape  of  a  gigantic  cross, 
and  beneath  them  on  the  crest  of  the  hill  he  built 
for  himself  a  funeral  pyre  of  the  rough  cobble,  and 
he  erected  three  monuments  of  stone  to  three 
heroes:  General  Fremont,  Robert  Browning,  and 
Moses. 

Miller  says  that  his  choice  of  this  retreat  on  the 
hills  was  determined  by  the  relative  cheapness  of 
the  land;  but  he  was  not  a  practical  man,  and  he 
must  soon  have  forgotten  this  practical  considera- 


234  AMERICANS 

tion  in  the  more  characteristic  reflection  that  The 
Hights  was  just  the  right  setting  for  a  man  like 
him.  His  primary  purpose  there  was  not  to  follow 
any  gainful  occupation,  but  to  live  as  all  poetic 
Utopians  have  held  that  a  man  should  live,  toiling 
a  couple  of  hours  each  day  at  honest  labor  of  the 
hands  and  devoting  the  rest  of  life  to  love,  friend 
ship,  art,  and  preaching  the  gospel  of  beauty.  The 
literary  expression  of  his  dream  appears  in  The 
Building  of  the  City  Beautiful,  1893,  a  Utopian  ro 
mance  obviously  related  to  the  writings  of  Ruskin 
and  William-  Morris,  but  apparently  inspired  di 
rectly  by  Miller's  conversations  with  a  Jewish  radi 
cal  in  Palestine.  He  had  it  in  mind  also  to  gather 
around  him  like-minded  workers  and  friends,  who 
should  give  to  the  world  below  them  an  illustration 
of  the  felicity  in  store  for  humanity  when  the  base 
passions  which  now  govern  society  are  eradicated. 
Several  young  poets  and  artists  came  to  him  and 
tarried  for  a  time  in  his  guest-house,  moved  by  curi 
osity  or  the  hopes  of  youth — among  them  several 
Japanese,  including  Yone  Noguchi.  And  students 
from  the  University  in  Berkeley  and  travellers  from 
remoter  places  made  little  pilgrimages  up  into  the 
hills  to  visit  this  romantically  costumed  poet  and 
seer  who  had  fought  with  Indians  and  now  preached 
universal  peace.  To  his  disciples  and  lovers  he  lec 
tured  in  a  somewhat  oracular  tone  on  the  laws  of 
the  new  American  poetry,  on  the  conduct  of  life,  and 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  235 

on  the  new  religious  spirit  which  is  to  embrace  all 
mankind. 

Miller's  visitors  did  not  always,  however,  find 
him  preaching  peace.  His  pacificism,  like  the  popu 
lar  American  variety,  was  tempered  by  hatred  of 
oppression  and  readiness  to  fight  "on  the  side  of 
the  Lord."  He  accepted  the  "idealistic"  interpre 
tation  of  the  Spanish-American  War,  and  chanted 
lustily  his  encouragement  of  the  struggle  to  free  the 
Cubans  from  the  tyranny  of  Spain.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  his  Chants  for  the  Boer,  1900,  he  pro 
tested  indignantly  against  the  British  imperial  policy 
in  South  Africa ;  and  his  strong  pro-English  sympa 
thies  give  a  certain  moral  quality  to  his  indignation. 
"Find  here,"  he  cries,  "not  one  ill  word  for  brave 
old  England;  my  first,  best  friends  were  English. 
But  for  her  policy,  her  politicians,  her  speculators, 
what  man  with  a  heart  in  him  can  but  hate  and 
abhor  these?  England's  best  friends  to-day  are 
those  who  deplore  this  assault  on  the  farmer  Boers, 
so  like  ourselves  a  century  back." 

There  was  an  interesting  element  of  inconsistency 
between  the  popular  American  humanitarianism 
which  Miller  had  gradually  adopted  as  his  religion 
and  his  strongest  poetical  impulses,  which  were  ad 
venturous  and  imperialistic.  In  these  later  years 
the  fire  of  his  fighting  youth  slumbered  in  the  veins 
of  the  white-bearded  seer,  but  it  was  never  extin 
guished,  and,  every  now  and  then,  it  flashed  out. 
In  such  seasons  pilgrims  to  The  Hights  found  that 


236  AMERICANS 

he  was  not  at  home.  He  was  a  restless  soul — like 
most  Utopists,  ill  adapted  to  the  permanency  of  a 
Paradise.  There  was,  moreover,  a  steadily  disquiet 
ing  feature  in  the  prospect  from  his  hills.  At  his 
feet,  the  great  ships  rode  at  anchor.  But  before 
his  eyes  daily  they  lifted  anchor  and  spread  their 
wings  and  sailed  away,  out  through  the  shining 
Golden  Gate  into  the  Pacific,  and  disappeared  on 
pathless  ways  over  the  rim  of  the  world.  For  him, 
even  at  the  age  of  sixty,  the  attraction  of  unknown 
places  was  magical.  He  followed  "the  gleam"  to 
the  islands  of  the  South  Seas,  to  Japan,  to  Alaska. 
In  1897-8  he  was  correspondent  of  the  New  York 
Journal  in  the  Klondike.  Trying  to  pass  from  the 
Klondike  to  the  Bering  Sea  by  way  of  the  Yukon, 
he  finds  the  river  closed  at  the  edge  of  the  Arctic 
Circle.  "It  was  nearly  two  thousand  miles  to  the 
sea,  all  ice  and  snow,  with  not  so  much  as  a  dog- 
track  before  me  and  only  midnight  round  about  me. 
There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  try  to  get  back 
to  my  cabin  on  the  Klondike.  In  the  line  of  my 
employment  I  kept  a  journal  of  the  solitary  seventy- 
two  days  and  nights — mostly  night — spent  in  the 
silent  and  terrible  ascent  of  the  savage  sea  of  ice." 
The  imaginative  harvest  of  these  later  adventures 
was  first  gathered  up  in  As  It  Was  in  the  Beginning, 
1903,  a  curious  poetical  fantasy,  oddly  brought 
forth  in  San  Francisco  in  pamphlet  form  with  a 
cover  decorated  by  a  figure  of  a  stork  bearing  in  his 
bill  the  infant  Roosevelt  in  spectacles.  In  1907, 


JOAQUIN  MILLER  237 

worked  over  and  shorn  of  its  more  grotesque  fea 
tures,  the  poem  reappeared  in  dignified  form  as 
Light,  with  the  interesting  prefatory  avowal:  "My 
aspiration  is  and  ever  has  been,  in  my  dim  and  un 
certain  way,  to  be  a  sort  of  Columbus — or  Cortez." 
(In  the  collective  edition  the  title  is  changed  once 
more  to  A  Song  of  Creation.) 

When  Miller  finally  reviewed  his  own  work  and 
prepared  his  collective  edition,  he  saw  that  much 
of  his  verse  had  been  hastily  written,  journalistic, 
prolix,  lacking  in  form  and  concentration;  and  he 
manfully  discarded  many  long  passages  of  it.  At 
the  same  time,  he  felt  as  never  before  the  impor 
tance  of  his  own  position  in  American  poetry.  He 
had  not  really  achieved  a  distinctive  poetical  style. 
He  had  not  been  a  thinker.  He  had  been  a  path 
finder  of  the  imagination;  like  Whitman,  he  had 
blazed  a  way  into  new  territories.  He  had  brought 
something  of  undiscovered  beauty  and  splendor  into 
American  literature.  He  exulted  in  the  wide  lands 
and  seas  which  he  first  had  annexed  to  the  provinces 
of  song.  He  had  sung  the  exodus  across  the  plains. 
He  had  pictured  the  great  American  desert.  He 
had  celebrated  the  forested  heights  of  the  Sierras, 
the  giant  trees  of  the  Mariposa  Grove,  and  the  falls 
of  the  Yosemite.  He  had  been  a  myth-maker  and 
had  sown  with  poetic  legends  all  his  western  land 
from  the  snowy  peaks  of  Mt.  Rainier  and  Mt. 
Shasta  through  the  golden  poppy  fields  of  the  cen 
tral  valleys  to  San  Diego  Bay,  Nicaragua,  and  the 


238  AMERICANS 

Amazon  River.  He  had  made  captive  for  romance 
the  outlaws  of  old  Spanish  California,  the  priests 
and  bandits  of  Mexico,  the  scouts  of  Fremont, 
dusky  Indian  heroines,  and  the  motley  multitude  of 
the  gold-seekers.  He  had  been  the  champion  of 
oppressed  peoples — the  Southern  Confederacy,  the 
native  American  tribes,  the  Jews  of  Russia  and 
Palestine,  the  Cubans,  the  Boers,  the  yellow  men 
and  the  Mexicans  in  California.  And  then,  to  widen 
his  horizon  at  sunset,  he  had  threaded  the  golden 
straits  and  had  sailed  "on  and  on"  to  the  Arctic 
Seas,  to  Hawaii,  to  the  Orient,  chanting  as  he 
sailed,  every  ready  for  fresh  adventure,  ever  in  love 
with  light,  color,  and  movement,  ever  himself  the 
romantic  troubadour,  the  picturesque  incarnation  of 
the  spirit  which  pervades  his  poems. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
A  NOTE  ON  CARL  SANDBURG 

Many  of  the  things  which  Carl  Sandburg  relishes 
I  relish:  the  jingle  of  the  "American  language"  in 
the  making;  the  Great  Lakes,  prairies,  mountains, 
and  the  diurnal  and  seasonal  scene-shifting  of  the 
elements;  all  kinds  of  workmen  with  their  tools  in 
city  and  country,  and  the  "feel"  of  an  axe  or  shovel 
in  my  own  hands ;  the  thunder  of  overland  trains  and 
the  cross-fire  of  banter  in  a  barber  shop;  eating 
ham-and-eggs  with  a  Chinese  chemist  at  a  wayside 
lunch-counter  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  sun- 
time;  the  mixed  human  contacts  to  be  had,  for  ex 
ample,  in  a  "common"  up-country  smoker,  where 
black  men,  Italians,  Poles,  Swedes,  Japanese,  In 
dians,  and  Germans  commune  happily  in  a  thick  blue 
mist,  and  a  fluent  young  travelling  man  "making" 
the  resort  towns  drops  into  the  seat  beside  me  and 
asks  what  "line"  I  am  carrying,  and  I  exchange 
matches  and  crackers  with  a  Dutchman  from  Java 
in  blue  overalls  moving  from  the  sugar-beet  fields 
of  Wisconsin  to  the  raspberry  district  of  Michigan, 
accounting  spontaneously  for  the  "yoost"  and  the 

239 


240  AMERICANS 

"yob"  in  his  vocabulary  by  his  long  contact  with 
the  North  Germanic  people. 

All  these  things  I  relish  and  am  familiar  with; 
and  yet,  as  I  study  my  fourth  volume  of  Mr.  Sand 
burg's  poems,  I  wonder  why  Mr.  Untermeyer  and 
the  other  fugelmen  of  the  "movement"  congratu 
late  the  public  on  the  ease  with  which  they  may 
read  and  enjoy  poetry,  now  that  classical  allusions 
and  the  traditional  poetic  diction  have  been  ban 
ished.  It  is  a  sham  and  a  delusion.  Mr.  Sandburg 
is  not  easy  to  read.  He  is  as  difficult  in  his  own 
fashion  as  John  Donne  or  Browning.  If  any  of  the 
men  in  my  common  smoker  should  glance  over  my 
shoulder  at  the  pages  before  me,  they  would 
see  abundance  of  familiar  words:  "taxi-drivers," 
"window-washers,"  "booze-runners,"  hat-cleaners," 
"delicatessen  clerks."  Perhaps  also  "shovel-stiffs," 
"work-plugs,"  "hoosegow,"  and  "exhausted  egg 
heads"  would  be  familiar  to  them.  But  I  think 
they  would  gasp  and  stare  at  "sneaking  scar-faced 
Nemesis,"  "miasmic"  women,  and  "macabre" 
moons.  I  think  they  would  meditate  a  long  while 
before  they  felt  any  emotion  whatever  in  the  pres 
ence  of  such  word  patterns  as: 

Pearl  memories  in  the  mist  circling  the  horizon, 
Flick  me,  sting  me,  hold  me  even  and  smooth. 

And  I  believe  they  might  read  the  long  title-poem, 
"Slabs  of  the  Sunburnt  West,"  twenty  times  with 
out  suspecting  for  a  moment  that  it  is  a  meditation 


CARL  SANDBURG  241 

on  God,  civilization,  and  immortality,  conceived  on 
the  brink  of  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado. 

Now,  the  considerable  obscurity  in  Mr.  Sand 
burg's  work  may  be  accounted  for  in  two  ways. 

In  the  first  place,  his  literary  allegiance  is  mixed. 
When  in  his  interesting  poem  on  "The  Windy  City" 
he  begins  a  lucid  paragraph  thus:  "Mention  proud 
things,  catalogue  them" — he  is  writing  under  the 
formative  influence  of  Whitman;  and  both  his  lan 
guage  and  his  emotion  are  straightforward  and  sin 
cere.  But  in  "Fins,"  for  example,  and  in  "Pearl 
Horizons,"  where  he  asks  the  "pearl  memories"  to 
flick  him  and  hold  him  even  and  smooth,  he  is  writ 
ing  under  the  deformative  influence  of  the  most 
artificial  phase  of  Imagism;  and  both  his  language 
and  his  emotion  are  tortured  and  insincere. 

In  the  second  place,  Mr.  Sandburg  thinks  that  he 
is  really  sympathetic  with  the  "working  classes"  and 
with  the  unloved  and  not  altogether  lovely  portion 
of  humanity  which  Mr.  Masefield  has  sung  as  "the 
scum  of  the  earth" ;  and  he  imagines  that  he  is  pretty 
much  out  of  sympathy  with  "the  great  ones  of  the 
earth"  and  with  all  those  who  speak  complacently 
of  "the  established  order."  Robert  Burns  sympa 
thized  with  the  Scotch  peasant  and  wrote  of  him 
and  for  him,  incidentally  pleasing  the  rest  of  man 
kind.  The  late  James  Whitcomb  Riley  sympathized 
with  the  farmer's  boy  and  wrote  of  him  and  for 
him;  and  as  there  were  a  great  many  farmers'  boys 
in  the  land,  he  pleased  a  wide  audience.  But  Mr. 


242  AMERICANS 

Sandburg,  who  sympathizes  with  the  taxi-drivers 
and  delicatessen  clerks,  does  not  write  for  them;  he 
writes  for  the  literary  smart  set,  for  the  readers  of 
The  Freeman,  The  Liberator,  The  Dial,  Fanity 
Fair,  etc. 

As  a  consequence  of  his  confronting  this  audi 
ence,  Mr.  Sandburg  appears  to  me  to  lack  somewhat 
the  courage  of  his  sympathies.  He  seldom  indi 
vidualizes  his  working-man;  almost  never  does  the 
imaginative  work  of  penetrating  the  consciousness 
of  any  definite  individual  and  telling  his  story  co 
herently  with  the  concrete  emotion  belonging  to  it. 
Instead,  he  presents  a  rather  vague  lyrical  sense  of 
the  surge  of  but  slightly  differentiated  "masses" ; 
he  gives,  as  the  newspaper  does,  a  collection  of  acci 
dents  to  undifferentiated  children;  he  is  the  voice 
of  the  abstract  city  rather  than  of  the  citizen.  He 
chants  of  dreams,  violences,  toils,  cruelties,  and 
despairs.  In  his  long  poem,  "And  So  To-day," 
commemorating  the  burial  of  the  Unknown  Soldier, 
he  finds,  however,  an  appointed  theme;  he  is  in  the 
presence  of  an  almost  abstract  fate,  which  he  ren 
ders  piteously  concrete  by  a  curious  parody  of  Whit 
man's  threnody  on  Lincoln  in  a  language  of  vulgar 
brutality — a  language  reflecting,  it  is  to  be  sup 
posed,  the  vulgarity  and  brutality  of  the  civilization 
for  which  the  Unknown  Soldier  died,  as  Mr.  Sand 
burg  bitterly  suggests,  in  vain.  In  the  short  ironical 
piece,  "At  the  Gate  of  the  Tombs,"  adopting  once 
more  the  most  biting  lingo  of  the  mob,  he  expresses 


CARL  SANDBURG  243 

powerfully  the  attitude,  let  us  say,  of  The  New 
Republic  towards  the  government's  treatment  of 
political  prisoners  and  conscientious  objectors — 
"gag  'em,  lock  'em  up,  get  'em  bumped  off." 

Radical  journals,  like  The  Nation  and  The  New 
Republic,  radical  journalists  like  Mr.  Upton  Sin 
clair,  and  radical  poets  like  Mr.  Sandburg,  create 
for  themselves  purely  artistic  problems  of  very  great 
difficulty,  of  which  they  do  not  always  find  triumph 
ant  solutions.  When,  for  instance,  Mr.  Sinclair 
presents  the  entire  American  press,  the  churches, 
and  the  universities  as  bought,  corrupt  conspirators 
against  truth,  he  creates  for  himself  the  pretty  prob 
lem  of  showing  where  truth  lodges :  it  is  an  artistic 
necessity — till  he  has  shown  that,  his  great  picture 
of  iniquity  seems  incredible,  illusory.  When  Mr. 
Sandburg,  in  his  poem,  "And  So  To-day,"  presents 
the  official  pageant  of  mourning  for  the  Unknown 
Soldier  as  a  farcical  mummery;  the  President,  the 
commanding  officers,  the  "honorable  orators,  but 
toning  their  prinz  alberts,"  as  empty  puppets;  and 
the  people  from  sea  to  sea  as  stopping  for  a  moment 
in  their  business — "with  a  silence  of  eggs  laid  in  a 
row  on  a  pantry  shelf" — when  Mr.  Sandburg  pre 
sents  a  great  symbolic  act  of  the  nation  as  vacuous 
and  meaningless,  he  creates  for  himself  the  pretty 
problem  of  showing  where  the  meaning  of  the  na 
tion  lies:  till  he  has  shown  that,  and  with  at  least 
equal  earnestness  and  power,  he  is  in  danger.  He 
is  in  grave  danger  of  leaving  his  readers  with  a  sense 


244  AMERICANS 

either  that  his  conception  of  the  nation  is  illusory 
or  that  both  he  and  they  inhabit  a  world  of  illusions 
— a  world  of  dreams,  violences,  toils,  cruelties,  and 
despairs,  in  which  nothing  really  matters,  after  all. 
Mr.  Sandburg  is  not  completely  unconscious  of 
the  problem  which  he  has  created.  To  take  a  simi 
lar  case,  even  Mr.  Oswald  Garrison  Villard,  a  man 
who  habitually  insists  upon  the  hopeless  condition 
of  the  Republic  and  the  brainlessness  and  heartless- 
ness  of  all  our  public  men — even  Mr.  Villard,  in 
sensitive  as  he  is  to  the  "antique  symmetry,"  is 
apparently  not  completely  unconscious  of  the  prob 
lem  which  he  has  created.  At  least  once  or  twice 
every  year  Mr.  Villard  drops  the  muck-rake  with 
which  he  harries  Washington,  and  writes  an  edi 
torial  in  behalf  of  the  New  Testament  and  the 
character  of  Christ,  as  if  to  prove  to  his  anxious 
readers  that  he  really  has  a  definite  standard  in 
mind  for  the  administration  of  the  War  Depart 
ment.  Mr.  Sandburg  does  likewise.  When  he  has 
me  all  but  persuaded  that  he  himself  is  at  heart  a 
barbarian,  that  he  feels  a  deep  and  genuine  gusto 
in  violence  and  brutality,  that  his  talk  about  building 
a  "city  beautiful"  is  for  the  consumption  of  ladies 
who  actually  bore  him,  that  in  fact  he  chafes  at  the 
slight  discipline  which  our  civilization  as  yet  im 
poses,  and  that  we  are  all  callous  "galoots"  and  may 
as  well  acknowledge  it  and  act  accordingly — then  he 
brings  me  to  a  pause  by  his  sympathy  for  the  "insig 
nificant"  private  life,  by  the  choking  pathos  of  his 


CARL  SANDBURG  245 

epigram  on  "the  boy  nobody  knows  the  name  of"; 
then  he  stuns  me  by  enjoining  himself,  with  a  studi 
ous  nonchalance,  to 

Write  on  a  pocket  pad  what  a  pauper  said 

To  a  patch  of  purple  asters  at  a  whitewashed  wall: 

"Let  every  man  be  his  own  Jesus — that's  enough." 


IX 
ANDREW  CARNEGIE 

Andrew  Carnegie's  countrymen  felt  in  his  life 
time  that  $350,000,000  worth  of  power  over  them 
was  more  than  any  man  ought  to  hold.  Accord 
ingly,  except  when  they  were  asking  him  to  found 
a  library  or  to  endow  a  college,  they  did  what  they 
could  to  keep  him  humble  and  to  persuade  him  that 
no  one  envied  him  and  that  no  one  would  bow  an 
inch  lower  to  him  out  of  reverence  for  his  fabulous 
wealth.  This  was  no  doubt  sound  democratic  dis 
cipline.  He  himself  must  have  applauded  the  spirit 
of  it.  "It  was  long,"  he  says  in  commenting  on  his 
own  radically  democratic  upbringing,  "before  I 
could  trust  myself  to  speak  respectfully  of  any 
privileged  class  or  person  who  had  not  distinguished 
himself  in  some  good  way  and  therefore  earned  the 
right  to  public  respect."  But  he  knew  all  the  time, 
and  his  countrymen  knew  at  heart,  that  adding  up 
his  stocks  and  bonds  would  not  summarize  his  tal 
ents  and  virtues.  His  gifts  made  him  appear  the 
most  magnificent  philanthropist  that  the  world  had 
ever  seen.  And  by  qualities  which  remained  with 
him  after  he  had  distributed  his  fortune,  he  was  one 

246 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  247 

of  the  most  original,  interesting,  and  representative 
men  of  his  generation. 

The  Iron  Master  possessed  intelligence  of  the 
first  rank  in  its  kind,  an  open  and  free  spirit  coupled 
with  extraordinary  firmness  of  character,  indefati 
gable  energy  and  initiative  and  a  "creative"  benevo 
lence,  together  with  abundant  humor,  poetic  senti 
ment,  and  deep  feeling  with  regard  to  the  things 
that  matter.  Hs  was,  in  short,  a  personality.  He 
appreciated,  furthermore,  the  significant  and  pic 
turesque  aspects  of  his  own  career  and  savored  its 
contrasts  like  a  man  of  letters.  When  in  his  old 
age,  at  his  retreat  on  the  Scotch  moors,  he  under 
took  at  the  insistence  of  his  friends  to  compose  his 
memoirs,  he  had  the  material,  the  perspective,  and 
the  mood  for  a  book  fit  to  stand  on  the  shelf  by 
Franklin's.  Following  his  own  precept  and  Frank 
lin's  example,  he  wrote  out  his  recollections  simply, 
modestly,  blithely,  like  an  old  gentleman  with  a 
good  conscience  telling  the  story  of  his  life  to  his 
friends  and  relatives. 

The  war  diverted  him  from  his  work  before  the 
manuscript  was  in  shape  for  publication.  He  wrote 
on  the  margin :  "Whoever  arranges  these  notes 
should  be  careful  not  to  burden  the  public  with  too 
much.  A  man  with  a  heart  as  well  as  a  head  should 
be  chosen."  Professor  John  C.  Van  Dyke  was  se 
lected  as  an  editor  possessing  both  these  qualifica 
tions.  His  task,  which  he  says  was  little  more  than 
to  arrange  the  matter  in  chronological  sequence,  he 


248  AMERICANS 

has  performed  unobtrusively — just  a  shade  too  un 
obtrusively.  Carnegie  had  far  more  than  the  ordi 
nary  manufacturer's  respect  for  literature,  and  he 
clearly  hoped  that  his  autobiography  would  be  con 
sidered,  in  the  stricter  sense,  as  "literature."  It 
contains,  however,  more  instances  of  the  "dangling 
participle"  than  perhaps  ever  before  appeared  in  a 
single  volume.  There  should  be  nothing  sacred,  to 
one  charged  with  the  editing  of  an  unfinished  manu 
script,  about  Mr.  Carnegie's  dangling  participles. 
Before  the  book  goes  into  its  second  edition,  these 
and  such  like  easily  corrigible  slips  should  be  silently 
amended.  Then  the  really  charming  spirit  which 
pervades  it — I  do  not  recall  a  harsh  or  ill-natured 
word  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  it — should 
make  it  a  place  in  the  best  company,  where  it 
belongs. 

Andrew  Carnegie  was  born  in  1835  at  Dunferm- 
line,  Scotland,  son  of  a  damask  weaver  who  was 
ruined  by  the  introduction  of  steam  looms,  and  who 
in  1848  borrowed  twenty  pounds  to  bring  his  family 
to  America,  where  "Andy"  made  his  "start  in  life" 
at  the  age  of  thirteen  as  a  bobbin  boy  in  a  cotton 
factory  at  a  dollar  and  twenty  cents  a  week.  A 
second-rate  "self-made  man"  might  have  attributed 
his  success  to  the  change  of  environment  and  to  his 
own  industry.  It  is  a  characteristic  and  attractive 
trait  in  Carnegie,  creditable  to  both  his  heart  and 
his  head,  that  he  recognizes  and  handsomely  ac 
knowledges  his  obligations  not  merely  to  his  em- 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  249 

plovers  and  employees  and  partners,  but  to  a  multi 
tude  of  benign  forces  cooperating  in  his  success. 

Though  he  had,  for  example,  but  a  few  years  of 
common  schooling,  he  makes  it  beautifully  clear  that 
he  received  from  various  directions  the  incentives 
of  an  excellent  education.  He  declares  that  he  was 
fortunate  in  his  ancestors  and  supremely  fortunate 
in  his  birthplace.  He  is  proud  of  a  grandfather  on 
one  side  who  was  familiarly  known  as  "the  profes 
sor,"  of  a  grandfather  on  the  other  side  who  was  a 
friend  of  Cobbett,  of  an  uncle  who  went  to  jail  to 
vindicate  the  right  of  public  assembly,  of  a  father 
who  was  one  of  five  weavers  that  founded  the  first 
library  in  Dunfermline,  and  of  a  mother  capable 
of  binding  shoes  to  help  support  the  family,  in  her 
morality  an  unconscious  follower  of  Confucius,  in 
her  religion  consciously  a  disciple  of  Channing.  As 
for  the  town,  it  had  the  reputation  of  being  the 
most  radical  in  the  kingdom:  the  stimulus  of  politi 
cal  and  philosophic  ideas  was  in  the  air;  the  edi 
torials  of  the  London  Times  were  read  from  the 
pulpit;  "the  names  of  Hume,  Cobden,  and  Bright 
were  upon  everyone's  tongue."  Dunfermline  was 
radical,  but  with  a  radicalism  nourished  on  history 
and  inclined  to  hero-worship;  for,  in  the  midst  of 
her,  Abbey  and  ruined  tower  fired  the  young  heart 
with  remembrance  of  King  Malcom  and  Wallace 
and  Bruce.  "It  is  a  tower  of  strength  for  a  boy," 
says  the  old  man,  "to  have  a  hero."  The  thought 
of  Wallace  made  him  face  whatever  he  was  afraid 


250  AMERICANS 

of,  and  remained  "a  real  force  in  his  life  to  the 
very  end." 

When  the  Carnegie  family  settled  in  America, 
their  capital  was  brains,  pluck,  honesty,  willingness 
to  work,  and  loyalty  to  one  another.  The  early 
stages  in  their  pecuniary  progress  were  marked  first 
by  payment  of  their  debts,  then  by  purchase  of  their 
first  little  house,  and  later  by  their  first  investment, 
in  five  shares  of  the  Adams  Express  Company. 
"Andy"  did  not  long  remain  a  telegraph  messenger, 
because  he  promptly  developed  his  faculty  for  doing 
"something  beyond  the  sphere  of  his  duties,"  which 
attracted  the  attention  of  those  over  him.  He 
picked  up  telegraphy  while  waiting  for  messages; 
he  learned  to  receive  by  ear  while  others  used  the 
paper  slip;  he  mastered  the  duties  of  a  train- 
dispatching  superintendent  of  division  while  send 
ing  the  messages  of  his  superior.  When  his  chief's 
arrival  at  the  office  was  delayed  one  morning  and 
the  division  was  in  confusion,  he  assumed  responsi 
bility  and  sent  out  the  orders  in  the  superintendent's 
name,  saying  to  himself  "death  or  Westminster 
Abbey."  The  union  of  special  knowledge  with 
courage,  which  made  "the  little  white-haired  Scotch 
devil"  a  first-rate  assistant  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
promoted  him  in  six  years  to  the  superintendency 
of  the  Pittsburgh  Division.  "I  was  only  twenty- 
four  years  old,"  he  says,  "but  my  model  then  was 
Lord  John  Russell."  Two  years  later  he  was  as 
sistant  director  of  telegraphs  and  military  railroads 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  251 

for  the  government.  After  the  Civil  War,  by  swift 
combinations  of  his  forces  and  rapid  marches  into 
new  fields  he  established  his  position  at  the  centre 
of  the  industries  on  which  the  internal  development 
of  the  country  most  directly  depended.  At  the  age 
of  thirty-three,  he  had  an  annual  income  of  fifty 
thousand  dollars;  its  subsequent  expansion  there  is 
not  space  to  recite. 

That  the  son  of  an  impecunious  weaver  should, 
while  acting  as  telegraph  operator  in  Pennsylvania, 
have  taken  Lord  John  Russell  as  his  model  strikes 
one  as  astonishing — till  one  studies  the  portrait  of 
this  young  man  at  sixteen.  The  bearing  and  the 
features — the  full  brow,  the  clear  penetrating  eyes, 
the  firm  but  sensitive  mouth,  are  those  of  a  well- 
bred,  even  of  a  high-bred  youth,  quite  the  stuff,  one 
should  say,  to  develop  into  a  Lord  Rector  of  St. 
Andrews  University,  laird  of  Skibo  Castle,  and  con 
spirator  with  Lords  Morley  and  Bryce  and  Grey 
for  the  world's  welfare.  The  record  of  his  early 
life  bears  out  the  impression  given  by  the  photo 
graph.  It  shows  a  boy  grounded  by  family  disci 
pline  in  self-respect,  moral  purity,  and  intellectual 
ambition.  It  indicates  that  the  wide  beneficence  of 
his  later  years  was  not  the  mere  after  thought  and 
diversion  of  a  satiated  money-getter,  but  the  object 
towards  which  his  efforts  tended  from  the  start. 

As  a  messenger  boy  he  v/as  reading  Macaulay, 
Bancroft,  and  Shakespeare,  and  was  learning  the 
oratorios  of  Handel.  His  first  note  to  the  press, 


252  AMERICANS 

written  at  the  same  period,  was  a  plea  to  have  a 
certain  small  library  opened  to  working  boys  of  his 
class.  The  7,689  organs  that  he  afterwards  gave 
to  churches  and  the  2,800  libraries  that  he  founded 
were  his  acknowledgment  to  society  for  the  impulse 
it  had  given  him.  He  had  worshipped  a  popular 
hero,  Wallace,  from  the  Dunf ermline  days ;  and  the 
hero  funds  that  he  established  throughout  the  world 
were  tokens  of  his  lifelong  hero-worship.  By  the 
school  of  thought  in  which  he  was  nourished,  war 
among  civilized  nations  was  reckoned  an  obsolescent 
and  absurd  instrument  of  statecraft;  his  Palace  of 
Peace  commemorated  the  aspirations  of  a  genuine 
friend  of  all  the  people. 

In  1868  he  had  made  a  memorandum,  indicating 
it  as  his  intention  to  retire  in  two  years  and  to 
"settle  in  Oxford  and  get  a  thorough  education" 
and  then  to  "take  part  in  public  affairs,  especially 
those  connected  with  education  and  improvement 
of  the  lower  classes."  Like  another  famous  man  of 
our  time,  he  discovered  that  it  is  not  easy  for  a 
leader  in  the  fullness  of  his  power  to  retire — "he 
had  come  to  the  ring  and  now  he  must  hop."  But 
he  continued  his  education  and  his  educating,  when 
he  could,  by  reading  Plato,  Confucius,  and  Buddha, 
by  travelling  in  various  lands,  and  by  earnestly 
advising  and  taking  the  advice  of  philosophers, 
presidents,  kaisers,  prime  ministers,  secretaries  of 
state,  and  other  experts.  He  acknowledged  the 
impulse  to  intellectual  growth  that  society  had  given 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  253 

him  by  gifts  of  buildings  or  endowment  funds  to 
five  hundred  educational  institutions  at  home  and 
abroad  and  by  his  great  central  foundation  with  its 
liberal  charter  for  "the  advancement  and  diffusion 
of  knowledge  and  understanding  among  the  people 
of  the  United  States." 

Some  of  us  criticized  him  because  he  did  not  give 
away  his  three  hundred  and  fifty  millions  stealthily 
and  secretly,  as  we  slip  a  quarter  into  the  collection 
box,  God  alone  being  aware  of  our  munificence.  But 
he  knew  that  one  of  the  most  important  of  his  bene 
factions  was  precisely  the  publicity  with  which  he 
restored  his  vast  accumulations  to  the  people  and 
put  them  at  the  service  of  the  upward-striving  mem 
bers  of  society.  It  was  for  him  to  declare  conspicu 
ously  and  with  magnificent  and  unmistakable  em 
phasis  what  money  is  good  for;  to  promote  science 
and  literature  and  music  and  peace  and  heroism.  He 
owed  the  friendship,  he  tells  us,  of  Earl  Grey,  who 
later  became  a  trustee  of  the  ten-million-dollar  fund 
for  the  United  Kingdom,  to  the  publication  in  the 
Times  of  these  sentences  from  his  instructions  to 
the  trustees  of  his  gifts  to  Dunfermline : 

To  bring  into  the  monotonous  lives  cf  the  toiling 
masses  of  Dunfermline  more  "of  sweetness  and 
light,"  to  give  them — especially  the  young — some 
charm,  some  happiness,  some  elevating  conditions 
of  life  which  residence  elsewhere  would  have  denied, 
that  the  child  of  my  native  town,  looking  back  in 
after  years,  however  far  from  home  it  may  have 


254  AMERICANS 

roamed,  will  feel  that  simply  by  virtue  of  being 
such,  life  has  been  made  happier  and  better.  If  this 
be  the  fruit  of  your  labors,  you  will  have  succeeded; 
if  not,  you  will  have  failed. 

Large-scale  beneficence — doing  good  to  towns 
and  entire  classes  of  society  and  nations — estab 
lishes  one  as  a  member  of  a  privileged  order,  which 
the  average  man  regards  with  a  certain  uneasy 
envy.  If  Carnegie  had  not  taken  from  us  that 
$350,000,000  we  might  all  and  each  have  had  the 
credit  of  contributing  to  the  purchase  of  those 
organs,  the  foundation  of  those  libraries,  the  estab 
lishment  of  those  hero  funds,  the  building  of  that 
Palace  of  Peace,  the  pensioning  of  those  employees, 
the  endowment  of  those  universities,  that  great 
fund  for  the  advancement  of  knowledge.  True,  we 
might  have  contributed.  We  might  have  taxed  our 
selves  at  that  rate.  We  might  have  made  similar 
investments  in  human  progress.  But  we  know  pretty 
well  that  we  wouldn't  have  done  so.  After  we  had 
taxed  ourselves  for  the  necessary  upkeep  and  ex 
pansion  of  our  army  and  navy,  we  should  have  felt 
too  poor,  even  had  steel  sold  for  some  dollars  a 
ton  less, — we  should  still  have  felt  too  poor  to  bear 
an  additional  tax  for  such  remote  objects  as  the 
promotion  of  heroism  or  science.  We  should  have 
felt  that  we  owed  it  to  ourselves  and  to  our  fami 
lies  to  apportion  our  little  "surplus"  to  our  tobacco 
funds  and  our  soft-drink  funds  for  the  tranquillizing 
of  our  nerves  and  the  alleviation  of  our  thirst,  or 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  255 

perhaps,  if  we  were  a  notch  above  such  sensual 
indulgence,  to  our  fund  for  the  collection  of  can 
celled  postage  stamps. 

In  the  age  of  individualism  which  produced  An 
drew  Carnegie,  society  had  scarcely  begun  to  "tap 
the  resources"  of  collective  effort  for  any  genuine 
amelioration  of  common  conditions.  The  people 
"perished"  because  they  had  no  vision  of  powers 
united.  In  this  present  hour,  clamoring  for  a  high 
leadership  which  fails  to  appear,  we  average  men 
may  look  back  a  little  regretfully  at  our  Carnegies, 
shrewd  and  level-headed  in  their  means  but  whole 
heartedly  and  aspiringly  democratic  in  their  ends, 
being  fain  to  confess,  we  average  men,  that  it  is  the 
pressure  of  the  "hero's"  exaction,  the  spur  of  high 
example,  a  vision  not  our  own,  a  power  not  our 
selves,  that  we  must  depend  upon,  if  we  are  ever, 
in  Pindar's  great  phrase,  "to  become  what  we  are." 


X 


ROOSEVELT  AND  THE  NATIONAL 
PSYCHOLOGY 


Mr.Roosevelt's  great  and  fascinating  personality 
is  part  of  the  national  wealth,  and  it  should,  so  far 
as  possible,  be  preserved  undiminished.  Since  his 
death  those  who  have  spoken  of  him  have  observed 
somewhat  too  sedulously  the  questionable  maxim, 
De  mortuis  nlhll  nisi  bonum.  To  say  nothing  but 
good  of  a  great  man  is  generally  fatal  alike  to 
biographical  vivacity  and  to  truth.  In  this  case 
it  is  a  serious  detraction  from  that  versatile  and  in 
exhaustible  energy  which  Lord  Morley  admired 
when  he  declared  that  the  two  most  extraordinary 
works  of  nature  in  America  were  Niagara  Falls 
and  the  President  in  the  White  House.  "He  made," 
says  William  Hard  with  the  intensity  of  one  catch 
ing  breath  after  the  close  passage  of  a  thunderbolt, 
"he  made  Theodore  Roosevelt  the  most  interesting 
thing  in  the  world,"  and  he  made  "the  world  itself 
momentarily  immortally  interesting."  That  touches 
the  heart  of  the  matter :  it  explains  comprehensively 

256 


ROOSEVELT  257 

why  his  friends  loved  and  his  enemies  admired  him. 
It  leaves  him  with  his  aggressive  definiteness,  his 
color,  and  his  tang.  Mr.  Roosevelt,  as  he  proudly 
insisted  and  as  he  admirably  painted  himself  in 
many  a  capital  chapter  of  his  Rough  Riders  and 
his  hunting  and  exploring  books,  was  stained  with 
the  blood  and  sweat  and  dust  of  conflict.  No 
image  presents  him  whole  that  lacks  a  dash  of  the 
recklessness  which  appears  in  Frederick  Macmon- 
nies'  vaulting  trooper  and  a  touch  of  the  ruthless- 
ness  hinted  by  the  fiercely  clenched  fist  in  a  well- 
known  photograph  of  him  pacing  the  deck  of  the 
flagship  with  "Fighting  Bob"  Evans.  He  lived 
and  died  fighting,  and  he  gave  a  thousand  proofs 
that  the  keenest  joy  he  knew  was  the  joy  of  battle. 
No  memorial  so  little  preserves  him  as  a  white 
washed  plaster  bust.  Better  than  all  the  eulogies 
pronounced  in  public  places  I  suspect  he  would  have 
relished  the  tribute  paid  to  him  in  private  conver 
sation  by  one  of  our  distinguished  visitors  from 
abroad.  "It  may  be,"  he  said,  "that  Mr.  Wilson 
possesses  all  the  virtues  in  the  calendar;  but  for  my 
part  I  had  rather  go  to  hell  with  Theodore  Roose 
velt."  Mr.  Wilson,  he  implied,  might  get  off  in 
a  corner  somewhere  with  Saint  Peter  and  Colonel 
House,  and  arrange  something  of  the  highest  im 
portance  to  the  heavenly  host;  but  all  the  cherubim 
and  seraphim  of  healthy  curiosity  would  be  leaning 
over  the  impassable  gulf  to  see  what  Mr.  Roose 
velt  would  do  next. 


258  AMERICANS 

It  is  because  such  notes  as  these  recall  the  most 
interesting  man  of  our  times,  "the  great  Achilles 
whom  we  knew,"  that  I  have  heard  and  read  with 
a  certain  languor  the  conventional  tributes  evoked 
by  his  death,  and,  more  recently,  have  gone  through 
the  posthumous  biographies  without  entire  satis 
faction.  Excepting  Mr.  G.  S.  Viereck's  saucy  apol 
ogy  for  being  a  pro-German,  the  cue  of  recent 
writers  has  been  canonization.  Mr.  Maclntire,  for 
example,  prefaced  by  General  Wood,  has  written 
a  purely  "inspirational"  narrative  with  a  conquer 
ing  hero  ready  for  the  moving-picture  screen  or  a 
Henty  novel  or  a  place  on  the  juvenile  bookshelf 
beside  "The  Boys'  King  Arthur."  As  a  specimen 
of  its  critical  quality,  I  select  the  following  passage, 
with  the  suggestion  that  it  be  read  in  connection 
with  the  report  of  the  Federal  Commission  on  the 
Packers :  "One  shudders  to  think  of  what  fate 
would  have  befallen  the  United  States  if  the  monop 
olies  which  Roosevelt  curbed  while  he  was  President 
had  been  allowed  to  flourish  until  this  era  of  revolu 
tion."  The  first  three  volumes  of  "Roosevelt,  His 
Life,  Meaning,  and  Messages,"  is  a  collection  of 
important  speeches,  articles,  and  messages  arranged 
by  William  Griffith;  the  fourth  volume  by  Eugene 
Thwing  is  a  rapid  biographical  compilation,  jour 
nalistic,  readable,  and  concluding  with  the  happy 
thought  that  if  the  meaning  of  Roosevelt's  life 
is  fully  appreciated  we  shall  find  in  the  next  genera 
tion  of  Americans  "a  veritable  race  of  moral 


ROOSEVELT  259 

giants."  Mr.  Lewis's  book,  for  which  Mr.  Taft 
supplies  an  introduction,  is,  of  course,  a  work  of 
quite  another  order.  For  the  earlier  period  it  is 
almost  as  entertaining  as  the  Autobiography,  and 
for  the  latter  years,  particularly  for  the  history 
of  the  Progressive  movement,  in  which  the  author 
was  an  important  participant,  it  is  an  independent 
authority  and  an  animated  and  agreeable  one  with 
many  small  intimate  strokes  of  appreciation.  Mr. 
Lewis  candidly  announces  that  he  considers  his  sub 
ject  too  near  for  "impartial  judgment,"  and  he  lives 
up  to  his  declaration  most  loyally,  contending  that 
practically  everything  Roosevelt  said  and  did  was 
exactly  the  right  thing  to  say  and  do. 

The  eulogists  and  biographers  claim  rather  too 
much,  and  one  could  wish  that  they  would  take  a 
little  more  pains  to  harmonize  their  favorite  facts. 
In  order  to  illustrate  the  power  of  mind  over  matter, 
they  all  foster  the  tradition  of  Roosevelt's  sickly 
youth.  But  Mr.  Maclntire  speaks  of  him  in  the 
New  York  Assembly  as  "this  puny  young  chap"  at 
just  the  period  in  which  Mr.  Thwing,  after  a  refer 
ence  to  his  "puny  voice  and  puny  hand,"  exhibits 
him  knocking  out  the  slugger  Stubby  Collins  and 
mopping  up  the  floor  with  "several"  others.  There 
is  a  similar  discrepancy  with  regard  to  his  linguistic 
attainments.  Roosevelt  himself  testified  that  he 
was  "lamentably  weak  in  Latin  and  Greek";  but 
Mr.  Thwing  asserts  that  he  was  "a  scholar  of  the 
first  rank  in  the  classics."  One  observer  describes 


260  AMERICANS 

his  conversational  French  at  a  luncheon  in  the  White 
House  as  voluble,  but  regardless  of  accent  and 
grammar;  but  Mr.  Thwing  says  that  "the  savants 
of  the  Sorbonne  heard  him  address  them  in  as  flaw 
less  French  as  they  themselves  could  employ."  Mr. 
Maclntire  credits  Roosevelt  with  the  message  order 
ing  Dewey  to  sail  into  the  port  of  Manila;  Mr. 
Lewis  says  it  has  been  established  that  Secretary 
Long  sent  it.  Mr.  Thwing  makes  him  the  dis 
coverer  and  namer  of  the  River  of  Doubt;  Mr. 
Lewis  represents  him  as  only  the  explorer  of  that 
river  which  in  his  honor  was  renamed  Teodoro  by 
the  Brazilian  Government.  When  there  is  a  differ 
ence  with  regard  to  verifiable  facts,  Mr.  Lewis  ap 
pears  generally  to  be  right.  In  the  total  estimates, 
however,  there  is  no  significant  difference;  the 
biographers  agree  that  Roosevelt  was  "our  typi 
cal  American,"  and  possessed  every  important  vir 
tue  that  we  admire. 

When  the  critical  biographer  arrives  he  will  re- 
examine  this  total  estimate.  Perhaps  he  will  be 
challenged  to  re-examination  by  a  certain  passage 
towards  the  end  of  Mr.  Lewis's  book:  "In  the  year 
1918,  a  friend  referred  to  the  year  1921  as  the  year 
when  he  (Roosevelt)  would  again  enter  the  White 
House.  He  had  been  in  one  of  his  jocular  moods, 
but  he  immediately  became  very  serious.  'No,' 
he  said,  'not  I.  I  don't  want  it,  and  I  don't  think 
I  am  the  man  to  be  nominated.  I  made  too  many 
enemies,  and  the  people  are  tired  of  my  candidacy'." 


ROOSEVELT  261 

Mr.  Roosevelt  knew  "the  people."  When  he  said, 
"I  made  too  many  enemies,  and  the  people  are  tired 
of  my  candidacy,"  he  admitted  what  none  of  the 
biographers  concedes,  the  waning  of  his  star,  his 
perception  that  he  could  no  longer,  as  in  1904,  say 
"We  believe"  with  strong  confidence  that  he  was 
uttering  the  convictions  of  the  overwhelming  ma 
jority  of  his  countrymen.  Both  he  and  "the  people" 
had  changed,  but  the  people  had  changed  more  pro 
foundly  than  he  in  ways  which  I  shall  attempt  to 
indicate  by  sketching  an  answer  to  three  questions: 
First,  what  were  the  dominant  aspects  of  the  na 
tional  character  at  about  the  time  of  Mr.  Roose 
velt's  advent  in  public  life?  Second,  what  signifi 
cant  alterations  in  the  national  psychology  did  he 
produce  in  the  period  during  which  his  personality 
was  most  heartily  accepted  as  an  incarnation  of  the 
national  character?  Third,  how  and  to  what  ex 
tent  has  his  national  representativeness  diminished? 

II 

Mr.  Roosevelt  did  not  emerge  conspicuously  on 
the  national  horizon  till  late  in  the  nineties.  The 
preceding  decade  appears  to  have  contained  extra 
ordinarily  little  to  kindle  the  imaginations  of  spirited 
and  public-minded  young  men.  There  had  been  no 
war  since  the  youth  of  their  fathers.  The  Govern 
ment  pursued  a  policy  of  sombre  rather  than  "splen 
did"  isolation.  The  country  offered  its  imposing 


262  AMERICANS 

attractions  chiefly  to  the  big  business  men.  Cap 
tains  of  industry  flourished  like  the  green  bay  tree. 
For  diversion  there  was  riotous  striking  in  the  Car 
negie  Steel  Works  at  Homestead;  but  the  State 
militia  put  it  down.  In  1893  there  was  a  financial 
panic;  but  it  blew  over.  In  1894  Coxey  led  an  army 
of  the  unemployed  to  Washington;  but  it  dispersed 
like  the  chorus  of  a  musical  comedy  amid  general 
laughter.  The  Columbian  Exposition,  at  the  open 
ing  of  which  Chauncey  Depew  assisted,  was  on  the 
whole  a  symbol  of  a  period  of  unexampled  ma 
terial  prosperity  in  commerce,  agriculture,  and  man 
ufactures.  In  1896  William  McKinley,  son  of  an 
iron  manufacturer  and  author  of  a  tariff  bill  de 
signed  to  protect  the  farmers  from  the  plain  people 
as  the  manufacturers  had  already  been  protected, 
was  elected  President  under  the  skilful  management 
of  Mark  Hanna,  wholesale  grocer,  coal  and  iron 
merchant,  later  United  States  Senator.  Mr.  Ros- 
coe  Thayer  remarks  in  his  life  of  Hay  that  the 
most  representative  American  in  the  third  quarter 
of  the  century  was  P.  T.  Barnum;  and  the  methods 
and  ideals  of  Mark  Hanna  as  political  manager  he 
compares  to  the  methods  and  ideals  of  Barnum. 
From  the  popular  magazines,  reflecting  current 
standards  of  success,  the  aspiring  youth  learned 
that  by  frugality  and  industry  he  might  become  as 
rich  as  Andrew  Carnegie  or  John  D.  Rockefeller  or 
as  noble  and  distinguished  as  Chauncey  Depew. 


ROOSEVELT  263 

The  Plutocratic  era  lacked — outside  the  field  of 
business — ideas,  imagination,  animating  purpose. 

Mark  Twain,  in  some  ways  a  singularly  sensitive 
person,  curiously  illustrates  the  point.  He  pos 
sessed  ambition  and  a  restless  energy  which  should, 
of  course,  have  found  satisfaction  and  ample  reward 
in  the  production  of  literature;  but  in  this  decade  he 
seems  to  have  been  irresistibly  driven  by  the  time- 
spirit  to  compete  with  the  acknowledged  leaders 
of  American  life  in  their  own  field.  He  spent  him 
self  trying  to  get  rich  and  live  in  the  grand  style  like 
his  friend  Carnegie  and  his  friend  Henry  Rogers. 
Feverishly  pushing  his  publishing  house,  his  type 
setting  machine,  and  a  half  dozen  projects  for  roll 
ing  up  a  fortune,  he  began  to  use  literature  as  a 
mere  handmaid  to  finance  and  to  regard  himself 
as  a  financier.  He  felt  himself  daily  on  the  brink  of 
immense  wealth  while  he  was  actually  headed  for 
bankruptcy.  His  recently  published  letters  give  the 
emotional  reaction.  Reading  the  morning  papers, 
he  says,  makes  him  spend  the  rest  of  the  day  "plead 
ing  for  the  damnation  of  the  human  race."  "Man 
is  not  to  me  the  respect-worthy  person  he  was  be 
fore  ;  and  so  I  have  lost  my  pride  in  him,  and  can't 
write  praisefully  about  him  any  more."  He  thinks 
that  he  detects  in  Howells  something  of  his  own 
ennui:  "indifference  to  sights  and  sounds  once  brisk 
with  interest;  tasteless  stale  stuff  which  used  to  be 
champagne;  the  boredom  of  travel;  the  secret  sigh 


264  AMERICANS 

behind  the  public  smile;  the  private  What-in-hell- 
did-I-come-for." 

With  less  bitterness  Mr.  Dooley — in  1897,  the 
year  of  Queen  Victoria's  jubilee — testifies  to  the 
same  effect  in  summarizing  the  achievements  of  his 
own  time  in  America : 

While  she  was  lookin'  on  in  England,  I  was  look- 
in'  on  in  this  counthry.  I  have  seen  America  spread 
out  fr'm  th'  Atlantic  to  th'  Pacific,  with  a  branch 
office  iv  th'  Standard  He  Comp'ny  in  ivry  hamlet. 
I've  seen  th'  shackles  dropped  fr'm  th'  slave,  so's  he 
cud  be  lynched  in  Ohio.  ...  an'  Corbett  beat 
Sullivan,  an'  Fitz  beat  Corbett  .  .  .  An'  th' 
invintions  .  .  th'  cotton  gin  an'  th'  gin  sour 
an'  th'  bicycle  an'  th'  flying  machine  an'  th'  nickle- 
in-th'-slot  machine  an'  th'  Croker  machine  an'  th' 
sody  fountain  an' — crownin'  wurruk  iv  our  civiliza 
tion — th'  cash  raygister. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  illustrations  of  the 
effect  of  this  busy  but  mercenary  and  humdrum  na 
tional  mind  upon  the  finer  spirits  in  the  political 
arena.  John  Hay,  for  example,  as  Secretary  of 
State  under  McKinley,  seems  to  have  gone  earnestly 
about  his  work,  suppressing  now  a  yawn  of  disgust, 
now  a  sigh  of  despair.  "Office  holding  per  se" 
he  writes  in  1900,  "has  no  attraction  for  me."  He 
has  some  far-sighted  policies  for  his  department,  but 
he  can't  put  them  through,  for  "there  will  always  be 
34  per  cent  of  the  Senate  on  the  blackguard  side  of 
every  question  that  comes  before  them."  Even 
more  of  this  quiet  disgust  with  American  public 


ROOSEVELT  265 

life  appears  in  the  now  celebrated  diary  of  Henry 
Adams,  a  man  who  "had  everything,"  born  into 
the  governing  class  yet  holding  no  higher  office  than 
that  of  private  secretary  to  his  father,  unless  it 
was  the  position  of  assistant  professor  of  history 
at  Harvard.  When  the  latter  position  was  offered 
to  him,  he  remarked  in  a  blase  tone  which  would 
have  thunderstruck  his  great-grandfather:  "It  could 
not  much  affect  the  sum  of  solar  energies  whether 
one  went  on  dancing  with  girls  in  Washington,  or 
began  talking  to  boys  in  Cambridge."  Still  more 
striking  is  Adams'  analysis  of  the  American  char 
acter  in  government  circles.  It  might  be  true,  he 
said,  in  New  York  or  Chicago,  that  the  American 
was  "a  pushing,  energetic,  ingenious  person,  always 
awake  and  trying  to  get  ahead  of  his  neighbors;" 
but  it  was  not  true  in  Washington.  "There  the 
American  showed  himself,  four  times  in  five,  as  a 
quiet,  peaceful,  shy  figure,  rather  in  the  mould  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  somewhat  sad,  sometimes  pa 
thetic,  once  tragic;  or  like  Grant,  as  inarticulate, 
uncertain,  distrustful  of  himself,  still  more  distrust 
ful  of  others,  and  awed  by  money.  That  the  Ameri 
can  by  temperament  worked  to  excess,  was  true; 
work  and  whiskey  were  his  stimulants ;  work  was  a 
form  of  vice;  but  he  never  cared  much  for  money 
or  power  after  he  earned  them.  The  amusement  of 
the  pursuit  was  all  the  amusement  he  got  from  it; 
he  had  no  use  for  wealth." 

While  the  national  mind  was  absorbed  in  business 


266  AMERICANS 

why  should  young  men  born  to  wealth  and  social 
position  strive  to  thrust  themselves  in  between  the 
captains  of  industry  and  their  political  representa 
tives?  Possessing  at  the  start  the  objects  of  the 
race,  why  should  they  contend?  Politics  was  gener 
ally  described  as  dirty  and  uninspiring;  why  should 
they  subject  themselves  to  its  soil  and  fatigue?  How 
some  of  them  were  answering  such  questions,  Jacob 
Riis  revealed  in  his  life  of  Roosevelt: 

They  were  having  a  reunion  of  his  [Roosevelt's] 
class  when  he  was  Police  Commissioner,  and  he  was 
there.  One  of  the  professors  told  of  a  student 
coming  that  day  to  bid  him  good-bye.  He  asked 
him  what  was  to  be  his  work  in  the  world. 

"Oh!"  he  said,  with  a  little  yawn,  "really  do  you 
know,  professor,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  there 
is  anything  that  is  much  worth  while." 

Ill 

Then  came  the  impact  upon  the  national  character 
of  the  Rooseveltian  personality,  persuaded  that 
there  are  a  hundred  more  interesting  things  than 
making  money,  all  "worth  while :"  hunting  grizzlies, 
reforming,  exploring,  writing  history,  traveling, 
fighting  Spaniards,  developing  a  navy,  governing 
men,  reading  Irish  epics,  building  canals,  swimming 
the  Potomac  with  ambassadors,  shooting  lions, 
swapping  views  with  kaisers,  organizing  new  par 
ties,  and  so  on  forever.  Under  the  influence  of 
this  masterful  force  the  unimaginative  plutocratic 


ROOSEVELT  267 

psychology  was  steadily  metamorphosed  into  the 
psychology  of  efficient,  militant,  imperialistic  na 
tionalism.  When  Roosevelt  heard  of  the  young 
man  to  whom  nothing  seemed  much  worth  while,  he 
is  said  to  have  struck  the  table  a  blow  with  his  fist, 
exclaiming:  "That  fellow  ought  to  have  been 
knocked  in  the  head.  I  would  rather  take  my 
chances  with  a  blackmailing  policeman  than  with 
such  as  he."  Mr.  Riis  remarks,  "This  is  what 
Roosevelt  got  out  of  Harvard."  But  clearly  he 
didn't  get  it  out  of  Harvard.  He  found  it — this 
wrath  at  the  sluggard — in  his  own  exuberant  tem 
perament.  Most  of  his  biographers  foolishly  in 
sist  that  he  had  no  extraordinary  natural  endow 
ment.  The  evidence  is  all  otherwise,  indicating  a 
marvellous  physical  and  mental  energy  and  blood 
beating  so  hot  and  fast  through  brain  and  sinew 
that  he  was  never  bored  in  his  life.  He  never  felt 
the  ennui  or  the  horrid  languor  of  men  like  Hay  and 
Henry  Adams.  He  had  such  excess  of  animal  spirits 
that,  as  every  one  knows,  he  was  accustomed,  after 
battling  with  assemblymen  or  Senators,  to  have  in 
a  prizefighter  to  knock  him  down. 

Whatever  delighted  him  he  sought  to  inculcate 
upon  the  American  people  so  that  Rooseveltism 
should  be  recognized  as  synonymous  with  Ameri 
canism.  Mr.  Lewis  is  at  some  pains  to  point  out 
that  in  his  private  life  he  was  an  old-fashioned 
gentleman  and  invariably  dressed  for  dinner.  The 
fact  is  mildly  interesting,  but  its  public  influence 


268  AMERICANS 

was  absolutely  negligible.  Rooseveltism  can  never 
be  interpreted  to  mean  dressing  for  dinner.  Prac 
tically  he  was  a  powerful  aider  and  abettor  of 
the  movement  to  banish  the  word  "gentleman"  from 
the  American  vocabulary,  except  as  a  term  of  con 
tempt.  He  was  ostentatious  about  his  friendships 
with  Mike  Donovan,  Fitzsimmons,  Sullivan,  and 
Battling  Nelson,  just  as  he  was  about  his  pursuit 
of  the  big  game  of  North  America,  because  he 
loved  the  larger  vertebrates  and  wished  to  implant 
an  affection  for  them  in  the  national  mind.  In  his 
sports  he  can  hardly  be  called  a  typical  American; 
the  typical  American  cannot  employ  the  champion 
pugilists,  nor  follow  the  Meadowbrook  hounds,  nor 
hunt  elephants  with  a  regiment  of  bearers.  These 
are  the  sports  of  emperors  and  rajahs  and  the  sport 
ing  sons  of  multimillionaires.  Still  Mr.  Roosevelt 
took  them  up  and  journalized  them  in  behalf  of  a 
strenuous  athletic  ideal  for  the  nation.  A  powerful 
animal  himself,  he  gloried,  day  in  and  day  out,  in 
the  fundamental  animal  instincts  and  activities,  re 
productive  and  combative,  the  big  family  and  the 
big  stick,  the  "full  baby  carriage"  and  "hitting  hard 
and  hitting  first;"  and  he  preached  them  in  season 
and  out  of  season. 

I  will  give  two  illustrations.  On  his  return  from 
slaughtering  elephants  in  Africa,  he  stopped  off  in 
Berlin  to  tell  the  Germans  about  the  world-move 
ment.  That  was  in  1910;  and  perhaps  the  Germans 
were  then  almost  as  well  informed  with  regard  to 


ROOSEVELT  269 

the  world-movement  as  Mr.  Roosevelt.  But  in 
those  days  his  exuberance  was  very  great;  for  it 
had  been  two  years  since  he  had  sent  a  message  to 
Congress,  and  he  found  relief  for  his  pent-up  ener 
gies  in  bestowing  advice  all  the  way  around  the 
European  circuit.  Accordingly  he  solemnly  warned 
the  Germans  that  one  of  "the  prime  dangers  of 
civilization  has  always  been  its  tendency  to  cause 
the  loss  of  virile  fighting  virtues,  of  the  fighting 
edge."  At  the  same  time  he  marked  it  as  a  re 
assuring  sign  of  our  modern  period  that  there  were 
then  larger  standing  armies  than  ever  before  in 
the  world.  These  words  seemed  to  his  German 
hearers  so  fitly  spoken  that  they  then  and  there 
made  Mr.  Roosevelt  a  doctor  of  philosophy.  He 
lectured  also  at  the  Sorbonne,  finding  a  text  in  a 
novel  of  Daudet's  in  which  the  author  speaks  of 
"the  fear  of  maternity  which  haunts  the  young 
mother."  The  country  in  which  that  is  generally 
true,  cried  Roosevelt  to  that  country  of  declining 
birth-rate,  is  "rotten  to  the  core."  "No  refinement 
of  life,"  he  continued,  "can  in  any  way  compensate 
for  the  loss  of  the  great  fundamental  virtues;  and 
of  these  great  fundamental  virtues  the  greatest  is 
the  race's  power  to  perpetuate  the  race." 

Roosevelt's  mental  exuberance  may  be  suggest 
ively  measured  in  this  fashion.  Mark  Twain,  when 
he  got  under  way,  was  a  fairly  voluble  talker.  But 
Mark  Twain  was  silent  and  overwhelmed  in  the 
presence  of  Rudyard  Kipling.  Kipling,  then,  had 


270  AMERICANS 

a  certain  flow  of  ideas.  But  Kipling  was  silent  and 
overwhelmed  in  the  presence  of  Roosevelt.  Again  I 
quote  Mr.  Thayer: 

I  have  heard  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  tell  how  he 
used  to  drop  in  at  the  Cosmos  Club  at  half  past  ten 
or  so  in  the  evening,  and  presently  young  Roosevelt 
would  come  and  pour  out  projects,  discussions  of 
men  and  politics,  criticisms  of  books,  in  a  swift  and 
full-volumed  stream,  tremendously  emphatic  and  en 
livened  by  bursts  of  humor.  "I  curled  up  on  the 
seat  opposite,"  said  Kipling,  "and  listened  and  won 
dered,  until  the  universe  seemed  to  be  spinning  round 
and  Theodore  was  the  spinner.'  ' 

IV 

Roosevelt  quickened  the  pace  of  national  life  by 
his  own  mental  and  physical  speed.  His  special  con 
tribution,  however,  was  not  the  discovery  but  the 
direction  of  strenuousness.  The  captains  of  indus 
try  had  been  strenuous  enough.  He  found  a  new 
object  for  physical  and  mental  energy  on  the  grand 
scale.  More  than  any  other  man  of  his  time  he 
made  political  eminence  a  prize  of  the  first  order  by 
his  own  unequivocal  preference  of  public  service 
and  glory  to  private  opulence  and  ease.  The  exi 
gencies  of  his  later  political  life  associated  him  in 
deed  with  what  a  western  humorist  has  described 
as  the  "high-low-brows;"  he  consorted  with  publi 
cans  and  sinners;  he  broke  bread  with  bosses  and 
malefactors  of  great  wealth;  he  played  up  the  prize- 


ROOSEVELT  271 

fighters  and  the  cowboys;  he  hurled  epithets  at 
Byzantine  logothetes  and  college  professors:  so 
that  one  almost  forgets  that  he  began  his  career 
distinctly  on  the  "high-brow"  side  as  a  "silk-stock 
ing"  reformer,  supported  by  the  vote  of  the  "brown- 
stone  fronts,"  foremost  of  the  pure-principled  pur 
poseful  young  "college  men  in  politics"  in  an  era 
of  sordid  greed  and  corruption.  But  in  the  days 
when  he  was  assemblyman  at  Albany,  police  com 
missioner,  and  civil  service  reformer,  men  did  not 
speak  of  him  nor  did  he  speak  of  himself  as  a  "prac 
tical  politician."  In  those  days  there  was  a  cer 
tain  bloom  on  the  fruit  that  he  reached  for ;  and  he 
did  not  disdain  to  speak  of  himself  as  a  "practical 
idealist."  In  that  role  he  delighted  even  fastidious 
disciples  of  Charles  Eliot  Norton's  fastidious 
school;  and  he  exercised  a  wonderfully  tonic  in 
fluence  upon  well-bred  young  men  of  his  generation. 
His  first  great  service  was  to  his  own  prosperous 
class,  to  young  men  of  means  in  college,  to  the  "in 
tellectuals"  generally.  He  did  not  preach  against 
wealth.  He  held,  like  the  philosopher  Frank  Crane, 
that  "men  who  get  $20,000  a  year  and  up  are  the 
most  valuable  citizens  of  the  nation."  On  the  other 
hand,  he  maintained,  like  that  journalistic  sage,  that 
the  man  who  inherits  a  million  and  spends  his  days 
playing  bridge  and  changing  his  trousers  is  "a  cootie 
on  the  body  politic."  To  fortune's  favored  sons 
he  declared  the  responsibilities  of  wealth  and  he 
taught  the  right  uses  of  leisure.  In  the  vein  of 


272  AMERICANS 

Carlyle  and  Kipling  he  preached  against  an  idle, 
pleasure-seeking  life  as  not  merely  undesirable,  but 
contemptible.  He  preached  the  gospel  of  work  for 
every  man  that  comes  into  the  world,  work  to  the 
uttermost  of  his  capacity;  responsibility  for  every 
advantage  and  every  talent;  ignominy  and  derision 
for  the  coward  and  the  shirker  and  the  soft-handed 
over-fastidious  person  who  thinks  public  life  too 
rough  and  dirty  for  his  participation.  Writing  of 
machine  politics  in  1886,  he  said,  rather  fatalisti 
cally:  "If  steady  work  and  much  attention  to  detail 
are  required,  ordinary  citizens,  to  whom  participa 
tion  in  politics  is  merely  a  disagreeable  duty,  will 
always  be  beaten  by  the  organized  army  of  politi 
cians  to  whom  it  is  both  duty,  business,  and  pleasure, 
and  who  are  knit  together  and  to  outsiders  by  their 
social  relations."  But  in  1894  he  put  the  bugle 
to  his  lips  and  summoned  the  more  intelligent  class 
of  "ordinary  citizens"  to  arms: 

The  enormous  majority  of  our  educated  men  have 
to  make  their  own  living.  .  .  .  Nevertheless, 
the  man  of  business  and  the  man  of  science,  the 
doctor  of  divinity  and  the  doctor  of  law,  the  archi 
tect,  the  engineer  and  the  writer,  all  alike  owe  a 
positive  duty  to  the  community,  the  neglect  of  which 
they  cannot  excuse  on  any  plea  of  their  private 
affairs.  They  are  bound  to  follow  understandingly 
the  course  of  public  events;  they  are  bound  to  try 
to  estimate  and  form  judgments  upon  public  men; 
and  they  are  bound  to  act  intelligently  and  effect 
ively  in  support  of  the  principles  which  they  deem 


ROOSEVELT  273 

to  be  right  and  for  the  best  interests  of  the  coun 
try.  ...  If  our  educated  men  as  a  whole  be 
come  incapable  of  playing  their  full  part  in  our  life, 
if  they  cease  doing  their  share  of  the  rough,  hard 
work  which  must  be  done,  and  grow  to  take  a  posi 
tion  of  mere  dilettanteism  in  our  public  affairs,  they 
will  speedily  sink  in  relation  to  their  fellows  who 
really  do  the  work  of  governing,  until  they  stand 
toward  them  as  a  cultivated,  ineffective  man  with 
a  taste  for  bric-a-brac  stands  toward  a  great  artist. 
When  once  a  body  of  citizens  becomes  thoroughly 
out  of  touch  and  out  of  temper  with  the  national 
life,  its  usefulness  is  gone,  and  its  power  of  leaving 
its  mark  on  the  times  is  gone  also. 

I  have  italicized  in  this  passage  the  characteristic 
three-fold  appeal:  the  straightforward  statement 
of  duty,  the  craftily  constructed  contemptuous 
phrase  for  the  dilettante,  the  quiet  but  significant 
reference  to  the  rewards  of  virtue.  In  Roosevelt's 
heart  there  sang  lifelong  the  refrain  of  Tennyson's 
ode  on  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  "The  path  of  duty 
is  the  way  to  glory;"  and  he  made  it  sing  in  the 
ears  of  his  contemporaries  until  the  blase  young 
man  of  the  Yellow  Nineties  became  unfashionable, 
yielding  his  place  to  the  Man  Who  Does  Things. 
This  alteration  of  the  national  psychology  was  of 
profound  importance.  It  marked  the  difference  be 
tween  a  nation  headed  for  decadence  and  a  nation 
entering  upon  a  renaissance ;  and  Roosevelt's  service 
in  bringing  it  about  can  hardly  be  overvalued.  Some 
appraisers  of  his  merits  say  that  his  most  notable 


274  AMERICANS 

achievement  was  building  the  Panama  Canal.  I 
should  say  that  his  most  notable  achievement  was 
creating  for  the  nation  the  atmosphere  in  which 
valor  and  high  seriousness  live,  by  clearing  the  air 
of  the  poisonous  emanations  of  "superior"  people: 

Let  the  man  of  learning,  the  man  of  lettered 
leisure,  beware  of  that  queer  and  cheap  temptation 
to  pose  to  himself  and  to  others  as  the  cynic,  as  the 
man  who  has  outgrown  emotions  and  beliefs,  the 
man  to  whom  good  and  evil  are  as  one.  The  poor 
est  way  to  face  life  is  to  face  it  with  a  sneer. 
There  is  no  more  unhealthy  being,  no  man  less 
worthy  of  respect,  than  he  who  either  really  holds, 
or  feigns  to  hold,  an  attitude  of  sneering  contempt 
toward  all  that  is  great  and  lofty,  whether  in 
achievement  or  in  that  noble  effort  which,  even  if  it 
fails,  comes  second  to  achievement.  .  .  .  The 
man  who  does  nothing  cuts  the  same  sordid  figure 
in  the  pages  of  history,  whether  he  be  cynic,  fop,  or 
voluptuary. 

Preaching  duty  and  meditating  on  glory,  Roose 
velt  came  up  through  the  dull  nineties  as  the  apostle 
of  "applied  idealism;"  and  all  good  men  spoke  well 
of  him.  He  seemed  to  be  striking  out  a  new  and 
admirable  type  of  public  man:  well  bred  but  stren 
uous,  ambitious  but  public-spirited,  upright  but  prac 
tical  and  efficient — the  idealist  who  gets  things  done 
which  everyone  agrees  ought  to  be  done.  But  few 
men  guessed  the  height  and  depth  of  desire  in  this 
fighter  of  legislative  crooks,  this  reformer  of  metro 
politan  police,  this  advocate  of  the  merit  system; 


ROOSEVELT  275 

and  no  one  knew  what  his  ideas  and  temperament 
would  do  to  the  national  life  if  he  became  its  ac 
knowledged  leader.  In  1898  came  the  Spanish 
War,  then  the  governorship  of  New  York,  the  vice- 
presidency  in  1900,  and  a  year  later  Roosevelt  was 
in  the  saddle.  These  events  swiftly  disclosed  the 
wider  horizon  of  his  mind  and  the  scope  of  his 
ambition  for  himself  and  for  America.  The  war 
with  Spain  brought  him  forward  as  the  Seminole 
War  brought  forward  Andrew  Jackson;  and  his 
personality  was  immensely  responsible  for  the  effect 
of  that  "incident"  upon  the  national  character. 


Mr.  Roosevelt  was  an  admirer  of  Thucydides, 
but  he  was  a  much  less  philosophical  historian;  for 
he  says  that  the  war  with  Spain  was  "inevitable," 
and  leaves  his  readers  to  explain  why.  The  small 
jingo  class  whose  veins  perennially  throb  with  red 
blood  and  national  honor  fought,  of  course,  to 
avenge  the  blowing-up  of  the  Maine.  The  mass  of 
the  plain  people  with  their  perennial  simple-hearted 
idealism  were  persuaded  that  they  were  going  in  to 
set  Cuba  free,  even  after  they  discovered  that  they 
had  also  gone  in  to  subjugate  the  Philippine  Islands. 
Mr.  J.  A.  Hobson,  the  English  economist,  says : 

Not  merely  do  the  trusts  and  other  manufactur 
ing  trades  that  restrict  their  output  for  the  home 
market  more  urgently  require  foreign  markets,  but 


276  AMERICANS 

they  are  also  more  anxious  to  secure  protected 
markets,  and  this  can  only  be  achieved  by  extending 
the  area  of  political  rule.  This  is  the  essential  sig 
nificance  of  the  recent  change  in  American  foreign 
policy  as  illustrated  by  the  Spanish  War,  the  Philip 
pine  annexation,  the  Panama  policy,  and  the  new 
application  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  to  the  South 
American  States.  South  America  is  needed  as  a 
preferential  market  for  investment  of  trust  "profits" 
and  surplus  trust  products:  if  in  time  these  States 
can  be  brought  within  a  Zollverein  under  the  suzer 
ainty  of  the  United  States,  the  financial  area  of 
operations  receives  a  notable  accession. 

There  is  an  absence  of  rose-pink  altruism  from  this 
last  explanation  which  should  commend  it  to  The 
Chicago  Tribune;  but  Roosevelt,  though  the 
Tribune's  chief  hero,  would  certainly  have  rejected 
it  for  an  interpretation  at  once  more  personal  and 
more  political. 

It  is  fairly  plain  that  this  war,  which  he  had 
done  his  utmost  to  prepare  for  and  to  bring  about, 
was  first  of  all  an  opportunity  for  a  man  of  his 
strenuous  leisure  class  with  fighting  blood  and  fight 
ing  edge  to  win  personal  distinction.  He  himself 
speaks  of  his  baptism  of  fire  as  his  "crowded  hour 
of  glorious  life;"  and  throughout  his  narrative  of 
the  exploits  of  his  regiment — "My  men  were  chil 
dren  of  the  dragon's  blood" — he  exhibits  a  delight 
in  fighting  that  reminds  one  of  the  exuberant  praise 
of  "glorious  battle"  uttered  early  in  the  late  war 
by  the  Colonel  of  the  Death's  Head  Hussars.  He 


ROOSEVELT  277 

is  as  proud  of  personally  bringing  down  his  Span 
iard  as  of  slaying  his  first  lion.  He  played  his 
daring  and  picturesque  part  in  a  way  to  rehabilitate 
military  glory  in  the  national  mind.  But  for  the 
astonishing  skill  with  which  he  wrung  the  last  drop 
of  dramatic  interest  from  his  troop  of  college  men 
and  cowboys  the  reverberations  of  the  affair  would 
soon  have  died  away  in  the  popular  consciousness. 
He  made  the  deeds  of  the  Rough  Riders  a  popular 
classic  like  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill.  His  little 
war  did  as  much  to  kindle  as  Mr.  Wilson's  big  war 
did  to  quench  the  military  spirit;  for  Mr.  Wilson 
went  in  with  the  grim  determination  of  a  chief  of 
police,  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  with  the  infinite  gusto 
of  a  big  game  hunter.  His  little  war,  as  he  him 
self  declared,  made  him  President. 

In  office,  he  did  not  sicken  of  power  as  did  the 
Washingtonians  of  whom  Henry  Adams  speaks. 
With  the  vast  influence  of  his  position  he  sought  to 
mould  the  national  mind  and  feelings  into  the  like 
ness  of  his  own.  He  sought  to  make  the  national 
mind  virile,  daring,  imaginative,  aggressive,  and 
eager  for  distinction  in  the  world.  He  preached 
to  the  nation  as  if  it  were  a  rich  man  of  leisure  with 
a  splendid  opening,  made  by  his  war,  for  the  practice 
of  the  strenuous  life.  He  set  the  example  by  magni 
fying  his  own  office,  concentrating  power,  teaching 
the  public  to  look  to  the  Federal  Government  as 
the  controlling,  dynamic,  and  creative  center  of 
American  life.  His  measure  for  the  regulation  of 


278  AMERICANS 

monopolies,  his  seizure  of  the  canal  zone,  his  irri 
gation  acts,  his  reservation  of  public  lands  all  exem 
plify  in  one  way  and  another  his  aversion  from 
the  spirit  of  laissez-faire,  his  passion  for  identify 
ing  the  state  with  the  man  who  does  things.  In  do 
mestic  affairs  this  policy  generally  estranged  the  "big 
interests"  and  won  the  support  of  the  "plain  people." 
In  foreign  affairs  the  big  interests  supported  him, 
but  the  plain  people  were  first  dazzled,  and  then 
astonished,  and  then  a  little  perplexed.  The  plain 
people  do  not  understand  foreign  affairs. 

President  McKinley,  by  instinct  and  upbringing 
a  domestically-minded  statesman,  had  indeed  begun 
to  speak  in  a  resigned  way  of  manifest  destiny  with 
regard  to  our  newly  acquired  island  possessions.  He 
could  hardly  do  otherwise,  for  this  was  the  mid 
summer  time  of  the  imperial  enthusiasm  of  the 
"Anglo-Saxons."  These  were  the  days  of  Rhode- 
sian  dreamers;  Kitchener  was  fighting  in  Egypt; 
Roberts  was  fighting  in  South  Africa;  and  in  1899 
Mr.  Kipling  struck  up  his  famous  chant:  "Take  up 
the  white  man's  burden,  send  forth  the  best  ye 
breed."  And  so  McKinley  gravely  recognized  our 
manifest  destiny  in  the  Far  East.  Yet  John  Hay 
says  that  he  was  called  in  by  McKinley  to  discuss 
foreign  affairs  not  more  than  once  a  month,  but 
that  as  soon  as  Roosevelt  was  in  office  he  was  called 
upon  every  day.  It  was  Roosevelt  first  who  em 
braced  manifest  destiny  with  the  joy  of  an  enkind 
led  political  imagination.  It  was  he  that  resolutely 


ROOSEVELT  279 

sought  to  waken  the  expansive  energies  of  the  na 
tion  and  to  give  it  the  fighting  edge  and  the  will 
to  prevail  in  the  impending  conflicts  of  the  powers. 
It  was  he  that  tirelessly  went  up  and  down  the 
land  declaring  that  the  imperialistic  tendencies  de 
veloped  by  the  Spanish  War  were  tokens  of  national 
virility  and  that  the  responsibilities  of  the  new  for 
eign  policy  were  glorious  opportunities  for  men  of 
the  heroic  mood  imbued  with  the  new  Rooseveltian 
Americanism. 

If  we  are  to  mark  his  place  in  the  spiritual  history 
of  the  times,  we  must  clearly  understand  the  temper 
which,  at  the  turn  of  the  century,  he  brought  into 
our  era  of  atrocious  international  conflicts.  No 
where,  perhaps,  did  he  declare  more  eloquently  the 
gospel  of  militant  imperialistic  nationalism  than  in 
his  address  on  The  Strenuous  Life,  delivered  before 
the  Hamilton  Club  of  Chicago  in  1899: 

The  timid  man,  the  lazy  man,  the  man  who  dis 
trusts  his  country,  the  over-civilized  man  who  has 
lost  the  great  fighting  virtues,  the  ignorant  man 
and  the  man  of  dull  mind,  whose  soul  is  incapable 
of  feeling  the  mighty  lift  that  thrills  "stern  men 
with  empires  in  their  brains" — all  these,  of  course, 
shrink  from  seeing  the  nation  undertake  its  new 
duties.  .  .  .  The  army  and  navy  are  the  sword 
and  shield  which  the  nation  must  carry  if  she  is  to 
do  her  duty  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 
The  twentieth  century  looms  before  us  big  with  the 
fate  of  many  nations.  If  we  stand  idly  by,  if  we 
seek  merely  swollen  slothful  ease  and  ignoble  peace, 


280  AMERICANS 

if  we  shrink  from  the  hard  contests  where  men  must 
win  at  hazard  of  their  lives  and  at  the  risk  of  all 
they  hold  dear,  then  the  bolder  and  stronger  peoples 
will  pass  us  by,  and  will  win  for  themselves  the 
domination  of  the  world.  Let  us,  therefore,  boldly 
face  the  life  of  strife.  .  .  .  Above  all,  let  us 
shrink  from  no  strife,  moral  or  physical,  within  or 
without  the  nation — for  it  is  only  through  strife, 
through  hard  and  dangerous  endeavors,  that  we 
shall  ultimately  win  the  goal  of  true  national  great 
ness. 

That  the  sentiments  and  principles  here  expressed 
sound  very  familiar  to  us  today  is  not,  I  fancy,  be^ 
cause  most  of  us  have  been  reading  Roosevelt's 
addresses  of  the  Spanish  War  period,  but  because 
we  have  been  reading  the  utterances  of  the  Pan- 
Germans  whom  Roosevelt  himself  in  1910  was  ad 
juring  not  to  lose  the  fighting  edge  and  whom  he 
was  congratulating  on  the  size  of  European  military 
establishments  as  a  sign  of  health  and  virility.  Ret 
rospectively  considered,  his  solicitude  for  the  fight 
ing  edge  of  the  Germans  reminds  one  of  the  matador 
in  Blasco  Ibanez's  Blood  and  Sand,  who,  it  will  be 
remembered,  prays  for  a  "good  bull."  With  the 
essentials  in  the  religion  of  the  militarists  of  Ger 
many,  Roosevelt  was  utterly  in  sympathy.  He  be 
lieved  that  if  you  kept  your  fighting  edge  keen 
enough  no  one  would  seriously  question  your  right 
eousness.  The  only  significant  difference  in  objects 
was  that  while  they  invoked  the  blessing  of  Jeho 
vah  upon  Pan-Germany  he  invoked  it  upon  Pan- 


ROOSEVELT  281 

America,  meaning  the  United  States  and  her  depen 
dencies,  protectorates,  and  spheres  of  influence — 
and  the  Pan-America  of  his  dream  made  Mittel- 
Europa  look  like  a  postage-stamp.  The  highest 
point  of  his  working  upon  the  national  mind,  the 
point  at  which  his  powerful  personality  most  nearly 
succeeded  in  transforming  the  national  character 
from  its  original  bias,  was  that  in  which  he  made  it 
half  in  love  with  military  glory,  half  in  love  with 
empire-building,  half  in  love  with  the  sort  of  strug 
gle  which  was  preparing  in  Europe  for  the  domina 
tion  of  the  world. 


VI 


The  American  leader  of  militant  imperialistic  na 
tionalism  fell  at  the  end  of  his  last  great  fight,  a 
fight  which,  it  may  be  soberly  said,  he  had  done 
his  utmost  both  immediately  and  remotely  to  pre 
pare  for  and  to  bring  about.  All  his  friends  and 
many  who  were  not  his  friends  give  him  credit  for 
the  immediate  preparation.  But  few  of  his  friends 
claim  or  admit  his  profounder  part  in  the  prepara 
tion  of  the  stage  for  the  conflict,  the  will  of  the  com 
batants,  the  conditions  of  the  struggle,  the  prizes  of 
victory.  The  preparation  runs  far  back  to  the  days 
when  he  began  to  preach  the  strenuous  life  in  the 
flush  of  the  Spanish  War,  to  the  days  when  he 
dangled  before  our  eyes  "those  fair  tropic  islands," 
to  the  days  when  he  boasted  that  he  had  taken 


282  AMERICANS 

Panama  and  let  Congress  debate  after  the  act.  In 
the  stunning  clash  of  militant  imperialistic  nations, 
a  clash  which  was  the  "inevitable"  goal  of  his  life 
long  policy,  as  it  is  that  of  every  imperialist,  he 
towered  above  his  fellow-citizens,  constantly  and 
heroically  calling  to  arms.  His  countrymen  rose, 
but  not  for  his  battle.  They  fought,  but  not  for  his 
victory.  Time  and  events  with  remorseless  irony 
made  him  the  standard-bearer  and  rallying  point  for 
an  American  host  dedicated  to  the  destruction  of 
his  policy  of  militant  imperialistic  nationalism 
abroad  and  at  home.  He  said  "Belgium,"  he  men 
tioned  Germany's  transgressions  of  law;  and  his 
countrymen  cheered  and  buckled  on  their  armor. 
But  if,  during  the  war,  he  had  dared  to  exhort  them, 
as  in  the  earlier  time,  "to  face  the  life  of  strife 
for  the  domination  of  the  world,"  they  were  in  a 
mood  to  have  torn  him  in  pieces.  In  that  mood 
they  fought  and  won  their  war.  Highly  as  they 
valued  his  instrumental  services,  the  principles  on 
which  they  waged  it  and  the  objects  which  they 
sought  drew  them  away  from  Roosevelt  and  to 
wards  Lincoln  and  Washington. 

At  the  present  time  it  is  obvious  to  everyone  that 
a  faction  of  his  old  friends,  incorrigibly  born  and 
bred  in  militant  imperialistic  nationalism,  are  mak 
ing  a  fight  over  his  body  to  wrest  from  the  simple- 
hearted  idealistic  plain  people  the  fruits  of  victory. 
Gloomy  observers — too  gloomy,  I  think — declare 
that  the  fruits  are  already  gone.  The  exponents  of 


ROOSEVELT  283 

nationalistic  egoism  and  selfishness  will  win  some 
partial  and  temporary  triumphs  in  this  as  in  other 
countries.  In  the  immediate  future  the  memory  of 
Roosevelt  will  be  the  most  animating  force  among 
our  American  Junkers.  There  will  be  an  attempt 
to  repopularize  just  those  Bismarckian  character 
istics  of  their  hero  which  made  him  so  utterly  unlike 
Lincoln — his  moral  hardness,  his  two-fistedness,  the 
symbolic  big  stick.  But  his  commanding  force  as 
chief  moulder  of  the  national  mind  is  over.  He 
must  take  his  rank  somewhere  among  the  kings  and 
kaisers  in  competition  with  whom  he  made  his  place 
in  the  spiritual  history  of  his  times.  He  can  never 
again  greatly  inspire  the  popular  liberal  movement 
in  America.  The  World  War  has  too  profoundly 
discredited  the  masters  of  Weltpolitik  in  his  epoch. 
It  has  too  tragically  illuminated  the  connections  be 
tween  the  cataclysm  and  the  statecraft  and  mili 
taristic  psychology  behind  it.  He  was  a  realist  with 
no  nonsense  about  him;  but  all  the  realists  of  the 
period  are  now  under  suspicion  of  being  unrealistic 
in  that  they  ignored  the  almost  universal  diffusion 
of  "nonsense"  or  idealism  among  mankind.  When 
Mr.  Roosevelt  fell  out  with  "practical"  men,  he 
almost  invariably  strengthened  his  position  with  the 
plain  people.  It  was  when  he  offended  their  "non 
sense" — as  in  his  vindictive  and  ruthless  onslaughts' 
upon  his  successor  and  upon  his  great  rival,  and  in 
his  conduct  of  the  Panama  affair — that  they  began 
to  doubt  whether  he  had  the  magnanimity,  the  fair- 


284  AMERICANS 

ness  of  mind,  the  love  of  civil  ways  requisite  to 
guide  them  towards  the  fulfillment  of  their  historic 
destiny.  He  developed  a  habit  of  speaking  so  scorn 
fully  of  "over-civilization"  and  so  praisefully  of 
mere  breeding  and  fighting  as  to  raise  the  question 
that  he  himself  raised  about  Cromwell,  whether  he 
had  an  adequate  "theory  of  ends,"  and  whether  he 
did  not  become  so  fascinated  with  his  means  as  fre 
quently  to  forget  his  ends  altogether. 

Take  the  ever-burning  matter  of  militarism.  His 
apologists,  like  those  of  the  Kaiser,  all  declare  that 
he  loved  peace ;  and  one  can  quote  passages  to  prove 
it.  I  will  quote  a  beautiful  passage  from  his  speech 
in  Berlin  in  1910:  "We  must  remember  that  it  is 
only  by  working  along  the  lines  laid  down  by  the 
philanthropists,  by  the  lovers  of  mankind,  that  we 
can  be  sure  of  lifting  our  civilization  to  a  higher 
and  more  permanent  plane  of  well-being  than  ever 
was  attained  by  any  preceding  civilization.  Unjust 
war  is  to  be  abhorred — ."  I  pause  to  ask  whether 
any  one  thinks  this  remark  about  working  on  the 
lines  of  philanthropists  and  lovers  of  mankind  is 
characteristic  Rooseveltian  doctrine.  I  now 
quote  the  rest  of  the  passage :  "But  woe  to  the  na 
tion  that  does  not  make  ready  to  hold  its  own  in  time 
of  need  against  all  who  would  harm  it.  And  woe 
thrice  over  to  the  nation  in  which  the  average  man 
loses  the  fighting  edge."  I  stop  again  and  ask 
whether  any  one  thinks  that  is  not  characteristic 
Rooseveltian  doctrine?  Why  does  the  second  of 


ROOSEVELT  285 

these  sentences  sound  perfectly  Rooseveltian  and  the 
first  absolutely  not?  Because  into  the  first  he  put 
a  stroke  of  the  pen;  into  the  second  the  whole  em 
phasis  of  his  character.  The  first  is  his  verbal  sop 
to  the  idealist;  the  second  is  his  impassioned  mes 
sage  to  his  generation.  By  his  use  of  rhetorical  bal 
ance  he  gives  a  superficial  appearance  of  the  mental 
equivalent;  but  by  his  violent  and  infallible  em 
phasis  he  becomes  the  greatest  concocter  of  "weasel" 
paragraphs  on  record.  In  time  his  hearers  learned 
to  distinguish  what  he  said  from  what  he  stood  for, 
the  part  of  his  speech  which  was  official  rhetoric 
from  the  part  that  quivered  with  personal  force. 

He  said,  it  is  true,  that  "mere  fervor  for  ex 
cellence  in  the  abstract  is  a  great  mainspring  for 
good  work;"  but  in  practice  he  night  and  day  de 
nounced  in  the  most  intolerant  language  those  who 
exhibited  mere  fervor  for  excellence  in  the  abstract, 
and  even  those  who  sought  excellence  by  other  ways 
than  his.  He  professed  love  for  the  plain  people; 
but  the  Progressive  episode  looks  today,  so  far  as 
he  was  concerned,  like  a  momentary  hot  fit  and 
political  aberration  of  a  confirmed  Hamiltonian,  re 
garding  the  plain  people  not  so  much  socially  as 
politically,  not  so  much  as  individuals  as  a  massive 
instrument  for  the  uses  of  the  state  and  the  govern 
ing  class.  He  said  that  he  had  a  regard  for  peace 
but  he  made  plain  that  he  loved  and  valued  war; 
and  he  denounced  every  one  else  who  said  a  good 
word  for  peace,  he  reviled  every  type  of  pacifist  so 


286  AMERICANS 

mercilessly  as  to  rouse  suspicion  as  to  whether  he 
really  cared  a  rap  for  the  object  of  the  pacifists. 
He  expressed  approval  of  arbitration;  but  he  invari 
ably  followed  up  such  expressions  with  an  assertion 
that  the  only  effective  arbitrator  is  a  man  in  shining 
armor.  He  avowed  a  desire  for  international 
order;  but  his  imagination  and  his  faith  did  not 
rise  to  a  vision  of  other  ways  of  attaining  it  than 
the  ways  of  Alexander  and  Caesar — by  the  imperial 
dominion  of  armed  power;  and  he  denounced  other 
modes  of  working  for  international  order  so  bitterly 
as  to  raise  a  doubt  as  to  his  regard  for  the  object. 
He  admitted,  like  many  of  his  followers,  a  faint  and 
eleventh-hour  respect  for  the  abstract  idea  of  a 
league  of  nations ;  but  he  led  in  raising  such  a  thun 
der  of  opposition  to  the  only  league  within  sight 
and  reach  that  he  weakened  the  hands  of  the  Ameri 
can  framers,  and  he  raised  a  question  as  to  what 
he  meant  in  the  old  days  by  his  fiery  declamation 
against  those  who  "make  the  impossible  better  for 
ever  the  enemy  of  the  possible  good." 

Mr.  Roosevelt  has  attained  satisfactions  which  he 
thought  should  console  fallen  empires :  he  has  left 
heirs  and  a  glorious  memory.  How  much  more 
glorious  it  might  have  been  if  in  his  great  personal 
ity  there  had  been  planted  a  spark  of  magnanimity. 
If,  after  he  had  drunk  of  personal  glory  like  a  Scan 
dinavian  giant,  he  had  lent  his  giant  strength  to  a 
cause  of  the  plain  people  not  of  his  contriving  nor 
under  his  leadership.  If  in  addition  to  helping  win 


ROOSEVELT  287 

the  war  he  had  identified  himself  with  the  attain 
ment  of  its  one  grand  popular  object.  From  per 
forming  this  supreme  service  he  was  prevented  by 
defects  of  temper  which  he  condemned  in  Crom 
well,  a  hero  whom  he  admired  and  in  some  respects 
strikingly  resembled.  Cromwell's  desire,  he  says, 

was  to  remedy  specific  evils.  He  was  too  impatient 
to  found  the  kind  of  legal  and  constitutional  system 
which  would  prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  evils. 
Cromwell's  extreme  admirers  treat  his  impatience 
of  the  delays  and  shortcoming  of  ordinary  constitu 
tional  and  legal  proceedings  as  a  sign  of  his  great 
ness.  It  was  just  the  reverse.  .  .  .  His  strength, 
his  intensity  of  conviction,  his  delight  in  exercising 
powers  for  what  he  conceived  to  be  good  ends;  his 
dislike  for  speculative  reforms  and  his  inability  to 
appreciate  the  necessity  of  theories  to  a  practical 
man  who  wishes  to  do  good  work  ...  all 
these  tendencies  worked  together  to  unfit  him  for 
the  task  of  helping  a  liberty-loving  people  on  the 
road  to  freedom. 


XI 

EVOLUTION  IN  THE  ADAMS  FAMILY 

Mr.  Brooks  Adams  apologizes  for  the  inadequacy 
of  his  introduction  to  his  brother's  philosophical 
remains  on  the  ground  that  the  publishers  hurried 
him,  saying  that  if  he  did  not  get  the  book  out 
within  the  year  it  would  have  lost  its  interest.  Of 
course  the  readers  who  take  up  The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams  because  it  is  the  sensation  of  the  hour 
will  soon  drop  away,  perhaps  have  already  done 
so;  but  interest  in  the  Adamses,  so  long  quiescent, 
so  piquantly  reawakened  at  the  end  of  the  fourth 
eminent  generation,  is  likely  to  hold  more  serious 
readers  for  some  time  to  come.  Henry  Adams  has 
thrown  out  challenges  which  the  reviewer  cannot 
lightly  answer  nor  easily  ignore.  What  shall  be 
done  with  that  profoundly  pessimistic  theory  of  the 
"degradation  of  energy" — a  degradation  alleged 
to  be  discoverable  in  the  universe,  in  democracy,  and 
even  in  that  incorruptible  stronghold  of  pure  virtue, 
the  Adams  family?  Every  one  who  has  sat  blithely 
down  to  read  The  Education,  much  more  to  re 
view  it,  must  have  discovered  that  it  is  only  the 
last  or  the  latest  chapter  of  a  "continued  story." 

288 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  289 

It  is  a  lure  leading  into  a  vast  literary  edifice,  built 
by  successive  generations,  which  one  must  at  least 
casually  explore  before  one  can  conceive  what  was 
the  heritage  of  Henry  Adams,  or  can  guess  whether 
the  family's  energy  suffered  degradation  when  it 
produced  him. 

One  who  wishes  to  measure  the  decline  from  the 
source  must  begin  with  The  Works  of  John 
Adams  in  ten  volumes,  edited  by  his  grandson 
Charles  Francis  Adams  I,  and  including  a  diary 
so  fascinating  and  so  important  that  one  marvels 
that  American  students  of  letters  are  not  occasion 
ally  sent  to  it  rather  than  to  Pepys  or  Evelyn.  One 
should  follow  this  up  with  the  charming  letters  of 
John's  wife,  Abigail,  also  edited  by  Charles  Francis 
I,  in  1841 — a  classic  which  would  be  in  the  American 
Everyman  if  our  publishers  fostered  American  as 
carefully  as  they  foster  English  traditions.  For 
John  Quincy  Adams,  we  have  his  own  Memoirs  in 
twelve  volumes,  being  portions  of  that  famous  diary 
of  which  he  said:  "There  has  perhaps  not  been 
another  individual  of  the  human  race  whose  daily 
existence  from  early  childhood  to  fourscore  years 
has  been  noted  down  with  his  own  hand  so  minutely 
as  mine;"  also  a  separate  volume  called  Life  in  a 
New  England  Town,  being  his  diary  while  a  student 
in  the  office  of  Theophilus  Parsons  at  Newburyport. 
One  may  perhaps  pass  Charles  Francis  I  with  his 
life  by  Charles  Francis  II.  Then  one  descends  to  the 
fourth  generation,  and  reads  the  Autobiography  of 


290  AMERICANS 

Charles  Francis  II,  published  in  1916,  a  notable 
book  with  interest  not  at  all  dependent  upon  re 
flected  glory.  Of  Brooks  Adams  one  must  read 
at  least  The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts  and 
the  introduction  to  The  Degradation  of  Democratic 
Dogma;  and  then  one  is  tantalized  on  into  The  Law 
of  Civilization  and  Decay,  America's  Economic 
Supremacy,  and  The  Theory  of  Social  Revolutions. 
Finally  one  approaches  Henry's  Education  not  quite 
unprepared  and  not  overlooking  the  fact  that,  be 
sides  biographies  of  Gallatm  and  Randolph,  he 
wrote  what  has  been  called  "incomparably  the  best" 
history  of  the  administrations  of  Jefferson  and 
Madison,  in  nine  volumes  distinguished  by  lucid 
impartiality,  and  Mont  Saint  Michel  and  Chartres, 
an  interpretation  of  the  twelfth  century  as  im 
pressive  in  height  and  span  as  the  great  cathedral 
which  Adams  takes  as  the  symbol  of  his  thought. 
Historians,  of  course,  are  familiar  with  all  these 
paths.  I  should  like,  however,  to  commend  them 
a  little  to  gentler  and  less  learned  readers.  Taken 
not  as  material  for  history  but  as  the  story  of  four 
generations  of  great  personalities,  living  always  near 
the  center  of  American  life,  the  Adams  annals  sur 
pass  anything  we  have  produced  in  fiction.  One 
may  plunge  into  them  as  into  the  Comedie  Humaine 
of  Balzac  or  Zola's  Rougon-Macquart  series  and 
happily  lose  contact  with  the  world,  which,  if  we 
may  believe  Brooks  Adams,  ultimus  Romanorum,  is 
going  so  fatally  to  the  dogs.  Perhaps  an  Adams  of 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  291 

the  present  day  must  come  forth  from  the  study 
of  his  heredity,  environment,  and  education  with 
a  conviction  that  he  is  an  automaton,  moved  for 
ward  by  the  convergence  of  "lines  of  force,"  and 
that  he  is  a  poorer  automaton  than  his  grandfather. 
But  for  my  part,  I  have  emerged  from  these  narra 
tives  much  braced  by  contact  with  the  stout,  proud, 
purposeful  Adams  will,  and  with  an  impression  that 
their  latest  pessimistic  theories  are  poorly  supported 
by  their  facts. 

The  Adams  pessimism  has  a  certain  tonic  quality 
due  to  its  origin  in  the  Adams  sense  for  standards. 
The  three  Adonises,  Charles  Francis,  Brooks,  and 
Henry,  have  humiliated  themselves  all  their  lives 
by  walking  back  and  forth  before  the  portraits  of 
their  statesmen  ancestors  and  measuring  their  own 
altitude  against  that  of  "the  friends  of  Washing 
ton."  An  Adams  should  always  be  in  the  grand  style. 
So  history  presents  them  to  the  young  imagination: 
Plutarchan  heroes,  august  republicans,  ever  engaged 
in  some  public  act  or  gesture  such  as  Benjamin  West 
liked  to  spread  on  his  canvases — drafting  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  presenting  credentials  to 
George  III,  signing  the  Monroe  doctrine,  fulminat 
ing  in  Congress  against  the  annexation  of  Texas,  or 
penning  the  famous  dispatch  to  Lord  Russell:  "It 
would  be  superfluous  to  point  out  to  your  lordship 
that  this  is  war."  In  a  nation  which  has  endured  for 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  it  ought  not  to  be  easy 
to  equal  the  elevation  of  character,  or  to  attain  the 


292  AMERICANS 

heights  of  achievement  reached  by  the  most  eminent 
men.  There  should  be  in  every  old  national  gallery 
certain  figures  unassailably  great  to  rebuke  the  na 
tural  insolence  of  younger  generations  and  silently 
to  remind  a  young  man  that  he  must  have  a  strong 
heart  and  almost  wear  it  out  before  he  can  hope  to 
deserve  what  these  worthies  have  made  the  proudest 
of  rewards,  the  thanks  and  the  remembrance  of  the 
Republic. 

For  an  Adams,  who  needs  a  bit  of  humility,  it  no 
doubt  is  wholesome  to  dwell  on  the  superiority  of  his 
forefathers;  but  for  the  average  man  who  needs  a 
bit  of  encouragement,  it  is  equally  wholesome  to  re 
flect  that  John  Adams  represents  a  distinct  "varia 
tion"  of  species.  The  family  had  been  in  America 
a  hundred  years  before  the  grand  style  began  to 
develop.  In  the  words  of  Charles  Francis  I,  "Three 
long  successive  generations  and  more  than  a  century 
of  time  passed  away,  during  which  Gray's  elegy  in 
the  country  churchyard  relates  the  whole  substance 
of  their  history."  If  we  can  only  understand  the 
processes  by  which  John  was  transformed  from  a 
small  farmer's  son  to  President  of  the  United  States, 
the  evolution  of  the  rest  of  the  family  will  be  as 
easy  to  follow  as  the  transmission  of  wealth.  Now, 
John's  emergence  is  singularly  devoid  of  miraculous 
aspects,  and  it  is  therefore  of  practical  interest  to 
the  democrat. 

John  abandoned  the  pitchfork  and  varied  his 
species  by  taking  two  steps  which  in  those  days 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  293 

were  calculated  to  put  him  in  the  governing  class. 
He  went  to  Harvard — a  course  which  may  still  be 
imitated,  but  which  in  1755,  when  the  total  popula 
tion  of  the  colonies  only  equalled  that  of  one  of  our 
great  cities,  set  a  man  far  more  distinctly  in  a  class 
by  himself  than  it  does  today,  and  marked  him  for 
a  professional  career.  Second,  after  an  insignifi 
cant  interval  of  school  teaching,  he  studied  law  in 
the  office  of  Rufus  Putnam,  and  thus  entered  a  still 
smaller  class,  carefully  restricted  by  limitation  of 
the  number  of  apprentices  who  could  be  taken  in  any 
office. 

At  the  same  time  he  began  keeping  a  diary,  a 
habit  which  it  is  now  the  custom  to  ridicule.  What 
strikes  one  about  John's  diary  in  his  years  of  adoles 
cence  is  that  he  uses  it  as  an  instrument  for  mark 
ing  his  intellectual  progress  and  getting  himself  in 
hand,  neither  of  which  is  a  morbid  activity.  He 
notes  that  he  is  of  an  amorous  temperament  and 
that  his  thoughts  are  liable  to  be  "called  off  from 
law  by  a  girl,  a  pipe,  a  poem,  a  love-letter,  a  Specta 
tor,  a  play,  etc.,  etc."  But  studia  in  mores  abeunt; 
and  year  after  year  he  is  digging  away  tenaciously 
and  purposefully  at  studies  which  communicate  a 
masculine  vigor  to  the  mind ;  and  he  is  reading,  with 
instant  application  to  his  own  future,  authors  that 
are  still  capable  of  putting  a  flame  of  ambition  in 
a  young  man's  vitals. 

The  breadth  and  humanity  of  the  old-fashioned 


294  AMERICANS 

program  of  reading  for  the  bar  may  be  suggested 
by  one  of  his  entries  at  the  age  of  twenty-three: 

Labor  to  get  distinct  ideas  of  law,  right,  wrong, 
justice,  equity;  search  for  them  in  your  own  mind, 
in  Roman,  Grecian,  French,  English  treatises  of 
natural,  civil,  common,  statute  law;  aim  at  an  exact 
knowledge  of  the  nature,  end,  and  means  of  govern 
ment;  compare  the  different  forms  of  it  with  each 
other,  and  each  of  them  with  their  effects  on  public 
and  private  happiness.  Study  Seneca,  Cicero,  and 
all  other  good  moral  writers;  study  Montesquieu, 
Bolingbroke,  Vinnius,  etc.,  and  all  other  good  civil 
writers. 

He  enjoins  it  upon  himself  to  observe  the  arts 
of  popularity  in  the  tavern,  town-meeting,  the  train 
ing  field,  and  the  meeting-house,  though  it  must  be 
added  that  none  of  his  line  mastered  these  arts. 
He  frequents  the  courts,  converses  with  successful 
men,  records  a  public-spirited  act  of  Franklin's,  and 
surmises  after  an  hour's  talk  at  Mayor  Gardener's 
that  "the  design  of  Christianity  was  not  to  make 
men  good  riddle-solvers  or  good  mystery-mongers 
but  good  men,  good  magistrates."  After  a  bit  of 
dawdling,  he  tells  himself  that  "twenty-five  years 
of  the  animal  life  is  a  great  proportion  to  be  spent 
to  so  little  purpose."  He  vows  to  read  twelve  hours 
a  day.  He  cries  to  himself:  "Let  love  and  vanity 
be  extinguished,  and  the  great  passions  of  ambition, 
patriotism,  break  out  and  burn.  Let  little  objects  be 
neglected  and  forgot,  and  great  ones  engross,  arouse, 
and  exalt  my  soul."  Such  temper  issued  from  that 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  295 

diet  of  lion's  marrow,  that  energetic  digestion  of 
law  and  classical  literature ! 


II 


The  only  remarkable  aspect  of  the  variation 
effected  in  this  generation  was  that  such  a  man  as 
John  Adams  should  have  found  such  a  wife  as 
Abigail  Smith,  a  woman  descended  from  the  relig 
ious  aristocrats  of  New  England,  and  her  husband's 
equal  in  heart  and  mind.  Her  descendants  of  the 
present  day  would  say  that  predetermined  lines  of 
force — theological  and  legal — converged  here  to 
strengthen  the  social  position  of  John  and  to  insure 
the  production  of  John  Quincy;  but  that  is  not  the 
way  most  men  think  of  their  wooing.  Abigail  had 
no  formal  schooling;  yet,  as  "female"  education 
went  in  those  days,  it  mattered  little.  She  was  obvi 
ously  the  "product"  of  that  family  culture  and  social 
discipline  which,  at  their  best,  render  formal  school 
ing  almost  superfluous.  She  had  the  gaiety  of  good 
breeding,  the  effusion  of  quick  emotions,  and  that 
fundamental  firmness  of  character  which  are  de 
veloped  by  a  consciousness  that  one  was  born  in 
the  right  class.  From  books,  from  table-talk,  from 
the  men  and  women  who  frequented  her  home,  not 
least  from  her  lover,  she  had  derived  the  views 
of  the  classical  mid-eighteenth  century,  with  just  a 
premonitory  flush  of  romantic  enthusiasm;  she  had 
become  familiar  with  public  affairs;  she  had  ac- 


296  AMERICANS 

quired  the  tone  and  carriage,  she  had  breathed  in  the 
great  spirit,  of  such  a  woman  as  Cato  would  have 
a  Roman  wife  and  mother. 

Emerson  cherished  the  thought  of  writing  an 
American  Plutarch.  In  such  a  book  we  should  have 
a  picture  of  Abigail  managing  her  husband's  estate 
in  Braintree  while  he  is  at  the  Congress  in  Philadel 
phia — through  pestilence,  siege,  battles,  and  famine- 
prices  not  venturing  to  ask  a  word  of  his  return,  lest 
she  perturb  a  mind  occupied  with  public  business. 
We  should  have  her  reply  at  a  later  period  to  one 
who  asked  whether  she  would  have  consented  to 
her  husband's  going  to  France,  had  she  known  that 
he  was  to  be  absent  so  long: 

I  recollected  myself  a  moment,  and  then  spoke 
the  real  dictates  of  my  heart.  "If  I  had  known,  sir, 
that  Mr.  Adams  could  have  effected  what  he  has 
done,  I  would  not  only  have  submitted  to  the  absence 
I  have  endured,  painful  as  it  has  been,  but  I  would 
not  have  opposed  it,  even  though  three  years  should 
be  added  to  the  number  (which  Heaven  avert).  I 
find  a  pleasure  in  being  able  to  sacrifice  my  selfish 
passions  to  the  general  good  and  in  imitating  the 
example  which  has  taught  me  to  consider  myself 
and  family  but  as  the  small  dust  of  the  scale  when 
compared  with  the  great  community. 

We  should  see  her  called  from  her  farm  to  be  the 
first  American  lady  at  the  English  Court.  We  should 
remark  that  she  finds  the  best  manners  in  England 
in  the  home  of  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  old  friend 
of  her  adored  Franklin,  where,  by  the  way,  she 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  297 

meets  those  dangerous  English  radicals  Priestley  and 
Price.  And  with  the  warmth  of  fond  native  preju 
dice,  we  should  adore  her  for  writing  home : 

Do  you  know  that  European  birds  have  not  half 
the  melody  of  ours  ?  Nor  is  their  fruit  half  so  sweet, 
nor  their  flowers  half  so  fragrant,  nor  their  man 
ners  half  so  pure,  nor  their  people  half  so  virtuous ; 
but  keep  this  to  yourself,  or  I  shall  be  thought  more 
than  half  deficient  in  understanding  and  taste. 

Ill 

In  the  jargon  of  Brooks  and  Henry  Adams,  as  I 
have  remarked,  irresistible  "lines  of  force"  converge 
for  the  education  of  the  second  generation.  More 
humanly  speaking,  the  ambition  of  John,  the  tender 
ness  and  pride  of  Abigail,  unite  above  the  cradle 
of  John  Quincy,  and  most  intelligently  conspire  to 
give  him  what  he  later  was  to  recognize  as  "an  un 
paralleled  education."  "It  should  be  your  care  and 
mine,"  John  writes  to  his  wife,  "to  elevate  the  minds 
of  our  children,  and  exalt  their  courage,  to  acceler 
ate  and  animate  their  industry  and  activity."  It  is 
the  fashion  nowadays  to  assert,  against  the  evidence 
of  history,  that  great  men  in  their  critical  hours  are 
unconscious  of  their  greatness;  but  these  Adamses 
assuredly  knew  what  they  were  about.  With  the 
fullest  recognition  that  her  boy's  father  and  his 
friends  are  living  classics,  Abigail  writes : 

Glory,  my  son,  in  a  country  which  has  given  birth 
to  characters,  both  in  the  civil  and  military  depart- 


298  AMERICANS 

ments,  which  may  vie  with  the  wisdom  and  valor 
of  antiquity.  As  an  immediate  descendant  of  one 
of  these  characters,  may  you  be  led  to  that  disin 
terested  patriotism  and  that  noble  love  of  country 
which  will  teach  you  to  despise  wealth,  pomp,  and 
equipage  as  mere  external  advantages,  which  cannot 
add  to  the  internal  excellence  of  your  mind,  or 
compensate  for  the  want  of  integrity  and  virtue. 

Of  course  John  Quincy  was  to  use  the  "external 
advantages"  which  his  mother  a  little  hastily  urged 
him  to  despise.  By  working  twelve  hours  a  day 
at  the  law,  John  Adams  had  raised  the  family  from 
the  ground  up  to  a  point  at  which  he  could  give  to 
the  educational  processes  of  his  son  a  tremendous 
expansion  and  acceleration.  At  an  age  when  John 
had  been  helping  his  father  on  the  farm,  from 
eleven  to  fourteen,  John  Quincy,  son  of  the  peace 
commissioner,  was  studying  in  Paris  or  Leyden,  or 
travelling  in  Russia  as  private  secretary  to  the 
American  Envoy.  He  acquired  history,  diplomacy, 
geography  as  he  acquired  his  French — by  what  we 
call  in  the  case  of  the  last,  "the  natural  method." 
It  cannot  be  too  much  emphasized  that  in  the  second, 
third,  and  fourth  generations  the  family  and  its 
connections  were  in  position  to  provide  a  liberal 
education  without  resort  to  a  university.  Before 
John  Quincy  went  to  Harvard  he  had  assisted  in 
negotiating  the  treaty  of  peace  between  his  country 
and  Great  Britain.  The  whole  matter  of  external 
advantages  may  be  summed  up  in  a  picture  of  the 
boy,  at  the  age  of  eleven,  returning  from  France  in  a 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  299 

ship  with  the  French  Ambassador,  the  Chevalier  de 
la  Luzerne,  and  his  secretary  M.  Marbois,  the  three 
lying  side  by  side  on  their  cots  and  thus  portrayed 
by  the  boy's  proud  father : 

The  Ambassador  reading  out  loud,  in  Black- 
stone's  Discourse  at  his  entrance  on  his  Professor 
ship  of  the  Common  Law  at  the  University,  and  my 
son  correcting  the  pronunciation  of  every  word  and 
syllable  and  letter.  The  Ambassador  said  he  was 
astonished  at  my  son's  knowledge;  that  he  was  a 
master  of  his  own  tongue,  like  a  professor.  M. 
Marbois  said,  Your  son  teaches  us  more  than  you; 
he  has  point  de  graces,  point  d'eloges. 

Charles  Francis  II,  who  knew  his  grandfather 
only  in  his  old  age,  says  that  he  was  not  of  a  "holiday 
temperament;"  but  the  diary  of  John  Quincy 
Adams's  early  life  in  Newburyport  shows  a  fairly 
festive  young  Puritan,  tempted,  like  his  father  be 
fore  him,  to  frequent  truancies  from  the  law,  read 
ing  Tom  Jones  and  Rousseau's  Confessions,  shoot 
ing,  playing  the  flute,  visiting,  frequently  dancing 
till  three,  occasionally  drinking  till  dawn,  and  re 
gretting  it  for  three  days  afterward.  His  social 
position  was  secure,  his  experience  and  attainments 
already  notable,  his  career  marked  out,  the  reflected 
glamour  of  paternal  glory  gratifying;  perhaps  he 
asked  himself  why  he  should  not  rest  on  his  oars 
while  his  contemporaries  were  catching  up.  Such 
considerations  may  occur  to  an  Adams,  but  they 
do  not  remain  with  him.  His  ambition  widens  with 


300  AMERICANS 

his  culture.  He  begins  on  the  verge  of  manhood  to 
pant  for  distinction,  bids  farewell  to  the  revellers, 
girds  up  his  loins,  and  strikes  into  his  pace. 

John  Quincy  Adams  had  found  his  stride  when 
he  wrote  to  his  father  from  London,  December  29, 
1795: 

When  I  am  clearly  convinced  that  my  duty  com 
mands  me  to  act,  if  the  love  of  ease,  or  the  love 
of  life,  or  the  love  of  fame  itself,  dear  as  it  is, 
could  arrest  my  hand,  or  give  me  a  moment's  hesi 
tation  in  the  choice,  I  should  certainly  be  fit  for  no 
situation  of  public  trust  whatever.  ...  So  much 
for  the  principle.  But  I  may  go  a  little  further. 
The  struggle  against  a  popular  clamor  is  not  with 
out  its  charms  in  my  mind. 

In  the  next  year,  following  the  example  of  John 
Wesley,  he  began  rising  at  four  o'clock;  and  so 
eager  was  his  mind,  so  tireless  his  industry,  so  com 
pletely  had  he  taken  himself  in  hand,  that  he  rose 
not  later  than  four-thirty  for  the  next  fifty  years — 
fifty  years  spent  almost  without  interruption  in  pub 
lic  service,  fighting  the  Jacksonian  democrats,  fight 
ing  for  internal  improvements,  fighting  the  extension 
of  slavery,  fighting  for  free  speech,  till  he  sank  in 
harness  in  his  eighty-first  year  on  the  floor  of  the 
House  of  Representatives. 

His  training  in  law  and  diplomacy  had  fitted  him 
for  statesmanship,  and  as  a  statesman  chiefly  he 
lives.  But  Brooks  Adams  makes  much  of  his  philo 
sophical  temper  and  of  his  talent  for  scientific  in- 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  301 

vestigation.  For  our  purposes  it  is  important  also 
to  note  that  he  had  a  marked  taste  for  literature, 
as  the  vast  memoirs  bear  witness.  In  his  old  age 
he  spoke  of  the  "ecstasy  of  delight"  with  which  he 
had  heard  a  choir  singing  his  version  of  the  65th 
Psalm  as  surpassing  all  the  pleasure  he  had  received 
in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  from  the  praise  of 
mortal  men.  His  literary  and  his  political  aspira 
tions  were  intimately  associated.  He  had  hoped 
that  his  diary  would  rank  next  to  the  Holy  Scrip 
tures  as  the  record  of  one  who  "by  the  irresistible 
power  of  genius  and  the  irrepressible  energy  of  will 
and  the  favor  of  Almighty  God"  had  "banished 
war  and  slavery  from  the  face  of  the  earth  forever." 

IV 

Charles  Francis  Adams  I,  perhaps  not  the  most 
ambitious  of  John  Quincy's  children,  was  the  only 
one  that  survived  him;  he  must  therefore  be  our 
representative  of  the  third  generation.  We  may, 
however,  pass  lightly  over  him,  because,  though  an 
eminent,  sturdy,  and  capable  man,  he  repeats  in 
general  the  formative  processes  and  the  careers  of 
his  predecessors  without  any  singular  distinction  or 
deviation  from  type.  His  richness  of  educational 
opportunity  may  be  summarized  by  saying  that  he 
learned  French  at  St.  Petersburg,  where  his  father 
was  minister,  spent  several  years  at  a  school  in  Eng 
land,  passed  through  the  Boston  Latin  School  and 


302  AMERICANS 

Harvard,  and  studied  law  and  observed  public  men 
from  the  White  House  in  the  administration  of  his 
father  and  in  the  palmy  days  of  Jackson,  Clay, 
and  Webster.  Possibly  if  the  father  had  retired 
after  his  defeat  for  reelection  in  1828,  Charles 
Francis  might  have  felt  more  distinctly  called  to 
advance  the  Adams  banner;  but  the  almost  imme 
diate  return  of  the  ex-president,  plunging  into  his 
long  Congressional  career,  preempted  the  field. 
Charles  went  to  Boston,  engaged  in  business,  served 
for  several  years  in  the  legislature,  was  elected  to 
Congress  in  1859,  and  crowned  his  achievements 
in  the  period  of  the  Civil  War  by  staunchly  and 
successfully  representing  the  Union  in  his  ministry 
to  Great  Britain. 


Coming  now  to  the  representatives  of  the  fourth 
generation,  who  made  their  careers  after  the  Civil 
War,  we  confront  once  more  the  three  Adonises  who 
more  or  less  darkly  despair  of  the  Republic  and  of 
the  future  of  the  Adams  line — Henry,  Brooks,  and 
Charles  Francis  II.  All  three  were  bred  in  the 
traditions  of  the  great  family,  inherited  its  culture 
and  social  advantages,  became  conscious  of  an  obli 
gation  to  distinguish  themselves,  strove  to  keep 
pace  with  the  new  nation  which  the  war  had  created, 
and  all  three,  rendering  an  account  of  their  adven 
tures,  intimate  a  degree  of  failure  and  rail  at  their 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  303 

education  as  inadequately  adapting  them  to  their 
circumstances.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  did  fall 
short  of  the  glory  of  their  ancestors  in  that  no  one 
of  them  held  public  office  of  first-rate  national  im 
portance.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  none  of  them 
really  competed  with  his  illustrious  predecessors. 
Each  of  them  developed  marked  variations  from 
the  ante-bellum  type,  in  one  case  so  marked  as  to 
constitute  a  new  species.  If  the  ancestral  energy  is 
degraded,  it  is  none  the  less  abundantly  present  in 
them  all. 

Charles  Francis  II,  the  least  highly  individual 
ized  of  the  trio,  was  the  one  who  most  conspicuously 
fell  into  the  stride  of  the  new  industrial,  expansive 
America.  At  his  graduation  from  Harvard  in  1856 
he  had  discovered  no  remarkable  aptitude — for 
which  he  blames  his  teachers — and  so  gravitated 
into  a  law  office.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  it 
slowly  occurred  to  him  to  enlist;  but,  once  in,  he 
enjoyed  the  hard  athletic  life,  and  developed  a  drill- 
master's  pride  in  his  company  and  In  his  regiment, 
at  the  head  of  which  he  rode  into  burning  Rich 
mond.  His  military  duties  disclosed  to  him  his 
talent  for  organization,  and  also  the  disquieting 
fact  that  famous  fighters  and  great  organizers  were 
frequently  beneath  his  standard  for  gentlemen; 
Grant,  for  example,  "was  a  man  of  coarse  fibre, 
and  did  not  impress  with  a  sense  of  character." 

But  the  war  had  toughened  his  own  fibre  and  had 
opened  his  eyes  to  new  careers  for  talents.  When 


304  AMERICANS 

it  was  over,  he  turned  to  the  study  of  railroads 
as  the  biggest  enterprise  of  the  new  era,  wrote  his 
Chapters  of  Erie,  became  a  member  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Board  of  Railroad  Commissioners,  which 
was  created  largely  through  his  instrumentality,  and 
crowned  his  professional  career  with  the  presidency 
of  the  Union  Pacific.  He  was  perhaps  the  first 
Adams  who  looked  west  with  any  special  interest. 
His  flash  of  genius  was  divining  the  future  impor 
tance  of  Kansas  City.  The  business  success  on 
which  he  plumes  himself  is  his  organization  of  the 
Kansas  City  Stock  Yards  Company,  which,  under 
his  forty-year  headship,  increased  its  capitalization 
from  $100,000  to  over  ten  millions,  and  earned 
annually  above  $1,200,000.  He  does  not  blush  to 
declare  that  he  also  organized  in  Kansas  City 
another  enterprise  which  made  in  one  year  "twelve 
dividends  of  ten  per  cent  each." 

The  big  business  men,  however,  like  the  big  gen 
erals,  disappointed  him  socially:  "Not  one  that  I 
have  ever  known  would  I  care  to  meet  again,  either 
in  this  world  or  the  next."  Having  made,  as  the 
vulgar  say,  his  "pile,"  this  well-bred,  energetic 
Massachusetts  business  man  withdrew  from  the 
ungentlemanly  world  of  business,  moved  from 
Quincy,  the  home  of  his  ancestors,  to  Lincoln,  be 
cause  the  former  residence  had  become  too  "sub 
urban,"  and  devoted  his  leisure  to  writing  his 
memoirs,  criticizing  Harvard,  and  composing  com 
munications  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Soci- 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  305 

ety.  At  the  age  of  fifty-five  he  burned  his  diary, 
full  till  then  with  the  expectation  that  he  might 
accomplish  something  notable;  and  in  his  Autobi 
ography,  with  the  tang  of  the  new  Adams  humility, 
he  declares:  "I  now  humbly  thank  fortune  that  I 
have  almost  got  through  life  without  making  a  con 
spicuous  ass  of  myself." 

Brooks  Adams  also  set  out  as  a  lawyer,  but  he 
seems  to  have  retired  much  earlier  into  authorship. 
His  writing  is  less  perspicuous  and  well-ordered 
than  that  of  his  brother  Charles;  but  that  is  partly 
because  he  has  more  ideas  and  more  difficult  ones. 
Brooks  is  a  restless-minded  lawyer  of  a  not  unfa 
miliar  type,  who  turns  here  and  there  for  something 
"craggy"  upon  which  to  wreak  his  excess  of  mental 
energy;  and  so  he  becomes  amateur-historian,  ama 
teur-economist,  amateur-philosopher.  The  antiqua- 
rianism  of  historical  societies  is  a  bit  too  tame  for 
his  temper.  Like  his  brother  Henry,  and  indeed 
in  collaboration  with  him,  he  seeks  a  law  connecting 
phenomena,  and  in  search  of  it  he  ransacks  history. 
He  imagines  and  declares  that  he  has  made  his  mind 
passive  to  the  lessons  of  facts  and  that  his  results 
are  scientific;  but  the  truth  is  that  he  is  a  dogmatic 
materialist,  an  infatuated  mechanist,  who,  when  he 
has  formulated  an  hypothesis,  sees  nothing  between 
earth  and  heaven  and  the  first  Adam  and  the  last 
Adams  but  the  proof  of  it. 

Like  his  grandfather,  he  finds  a  certain  charm  in 


306  AMERICANS 

an  unpopular  position.  Sitting  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Plymouth  Rock,  he  discovers  that  the  scutcheon 
of  his  Puritan  forefathers  blushes  with  the  blood 
of  Quakers  and  Anabaptists;  and  in  his  Emancipa 
tion  of  Massachusetts,  Puritan  as  he  is,  he  re 
morselessly  prosecutes  them  as  selfish  and  blood 
thirsty  hypocrites.  Looking  further  into  history, 
he  concludes  that  the  same  indictment  can  be 
brought  against  all  religious  societies  and  organi 
zations  from  the  time  of  Moses  down;  for  the  facts 
constrain  him  to  believe  that  the  two  master  passions 
of  man  are  Fear  and  Greed.  If  he  refrains  from 
censure,  it  is  because  he  holds  that  mental  as  well 
as  physical  phenomena  are  determined  as  fatally  as 
the  earth  moves  round  the  sun.  The  examination 
of  long  periods  of  history  impresses  him  with  "the 
exceedingly  small  part  played  by  conscious  thought 
in  moulding  the  fates  of  men."  He  applies  the  doc 
trine  of  manifest  destiny  in  the  most  fatalistic  sense 
to  the  Philippine  Islands  and  to  capitalistic  society, 
which,  however,  seems  to  him  on  the  point  of  dis 
integration  into  a  condition  from  which  it  can  only 
be  revivified  by  an  "infusion  of  barbarian  blood." 

Brooks  attributes  many  of  his  views  to  Henry 
and  undertakes  to  interpret  him;  but  temperamen 
tally  he  is  not  qualified  to  understand  him.  He 
admits,  indeed,  that  there  were  crypts  in  his  brother 
which  he  had  never  entered.  Chief  of  these  was 
the  unfathomable  crypt  of  his  skepticism.  By  con- 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  307 

tact  with  Mill,  Comte,  Darwin,  Spencer,  all  the 
Adamses  of  the  fourth  generation  had  been  emanci 
pated  from  their  attenuated  hereditary  belief  in 
a  beneficent  overruling  Providence.  But  Charles 
Francis  II  and  Brooks  recommitted  themselves 
without  reservation  to  the  overweening  posivitlsm 
of  mid-century  "scientific"  philosophy.  Henry  alone 
refuses  to  surrender.  A  wily,  experienced  wrestler, 
returning  again  and  again  to  grapple  with  the  Time- 
Spirit,  at  the  end  of  each  bout  he  eludes  the  adver 
sary;  and  at  the  moment  one  expects  to  see  him 
thrown,  suddenly  he  has  vanished,  he  has  fled 
through  centuries  falling  about  him  like  autumn 
leaves,  and  from  somewhere  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
near  some  old  shrine  of  the  Virgin,  one  hears  the 
sound  of  mocking  laughter.  It  is  the  free  spirit, 
eternally  seeking. 

Henry  was,  I  think,  a  great  man  and  the  only 
great  Adams  of  his  generation.  All  the  other 
Adamses  had  been  men  of  action  tinctured  with 
letters.  Henry  alone  definitely  renounced  action 
and  turned  the  full  current  of  the  ancestral  energy 
to  letters.  By  so  doing  he  established  a  new 
standard  of  achievement  for  the  Adams  line;  and 
in  consequence,  of  course,  for  the  rest  of  us.  Up 
to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  there  had  been  for 
them  but  one  field  of  glory,  the  political  arena,  and 
but  one  standard  of  achievement,  national  admin 
istration.  After  the  war  Charles  Francis  II  tried 
to  be  great  in  "big  business,"  but  in  the  Adams  sense 


308  AMERICANS 

"failed"  because  his  culture  was  of  no  use  there. 
Brooks  tried  for  greatness  in  naturalistic  philoso 
phy,  but  found  that  his  creed  ignobly  reduced  all 
heroes  to  automata.  But  Henry,  without  otherwise 
committing  himself,  sought  to  comprehend  and  to 
represent  his  world,  and  he  achieved  greatness. 
Like  yet  unlike  his  ancestors  who  were  painted  by 
Copley  and  Stuart,  he  is  in  the  grand  style. 

The  Education  of  Henry  Adams  marks  with 
precision  the  hour  when  its  author  became  conscious 
of  his  variation.  It  was  in  England,  towards  the 
close  of  the  war,  where  as  secretary  to  his  father 
he  had  exhausted  all  the  excitements  of  the  diplo 
matic  "game,"  and  London  society  had  begun  to 
pall,  and  loitering  in  Italy  had  ceased  to  charm,  yet 
he  was  collecting  bric-a-brac  and  sketches  by  the  old 
masters  and  becoming  attached  to  his  habits  and  his 
hansom  cabs,  and  was  in  a  fair  way  to  become  one 
of  those  dilettantish,  blase  young  Americans  of  the 
period,  whom  Henry  James  has  preserved  like 
pressed  flowers  for  posterity.  It  was  after  Sir 
Charles  Lyell  and  the  evolutionists  had  set  him  off 
on  a  new  quest  for  a  "father" — it  mattered  not,  he 
said,  "whether  the  father  breathed  through  lungs, 
or  walked  on  fins,  or  on  feet."  It  was  in  that  sum 
mer  hour,  characteristically  marked  by  him  with  its 
picturesque  accessories,  when  he  had  wandered  to 
Wenlock  Edge  in  Shropshire,  and,  throwing  himself 
on  the  grass  where  he  could  look  across  the  Marches 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  309 

to  the  mountains  of  Wales,  thus  meditated  on  the 
new  theory: 

Natural  selection  seemed  a  dogma  to  be  put  in 
the  place  of  the  Athanasian  creed;  it  was  a  form 
of  religious  hope;  a  promise  of  ultimate  perfection. 
Adams  wished  no  better;  he  warmly  sympathized 
in  the  object;  but  when  he  came  to  ask  himself  what 
he  truly  thought,  he  felt  that  he  had  no  Faith;  that 
whenever  the  next  new  hobby  should  be  brought  out, 
he  should  surely  drop  off  Darwinism  like  a  monkey 
from  a  perch;  that  the  idea  of  one  Form,  Law, 
Order,  or  Sequence  had  no  more  value  for  him  than 
the  idea  of  none;  that  what  he  valued  most  was 
Motion,  and  that  what  attracted  his  mind  was 
Change.  .  .  .  Henry  Adams  was  the  first  in  an 
infinite  series  to  discover  and  admit  to  himself  that 
he  really  did  not  care  that  it  should  be  proved  true, 
unless  the  process  were  new  and  amusing.  He  was 
a  Darwinian  for  fun. 

From  that  moment,  literature  was  the  one  career 
for  Henry,  and  all  his  overtures  were  failures  till 
he  discovered  it.  He  returned  to  America,  indeed, 
with  the  Emersonian  resolution  that  "the  current 
of  his  time  was  to  be  his  current,  lead  where  it 
might."  He  went  to  Washington,  as  a  member  of 
the  governing  class  should  do,  and  while  waiting 
for  an  opportunity  to  serve  the  incoming  administra 
tion  of  Grant,  offered  himself  on  long  argumenta 
tive  walks  as  the  anvil  for  Sumner's  hammer.  The 
announcement  of  Grant's  cabinet,  however,  as  he 
explains  the  matter,  closed  for  him  the  door  of 


310  AMERICANS 

political  opportunity.  A  revolution  had  taken  place 
which  had  made  him  appear  "an  estray  of  the  fif 
ties,  a  belated  reveller,  a  scholar-gipsy."  Coal, 
iron,  and  steam  had  supplanted  agriculture,  hand 
work,  and  learning.  "His  world  was  dead.  Not  a 
Polish  Jew  fresh  from  Warsaw  or  Cracow — not  a 
furtive  Yaccob  or  Ysaac — but  had  a  keener  instinct, 
an  intenser  energy  and  a  freer  hand  than  he — 
American  of  Americans,  with  Heaven  knew  how 
many  Puritans  and  Patriots  behind  him,  and  an 
education  that  had  cost  a  civil  war."  And  so  Henry 
drifted  into  his  antiquarian  professorship  at  Har 
vard,  cut  loose  from  that  and  wrote  his  great  his 
tory  of  Jefferson  and  Madison,  and  only  returned 
to  Washington  to  watch  the  spectacle,  and  to  sit  in 
his  windows  with  John  Hay,  laughing  at  Presidents, 
and  mocking  the  runner's  heat. 

Where  was  the  bold  energy  of  the  first  and 
second  Adams  that  broke  down  barred  doors  of 
opportunity  and  found  a  "charm"  in  contending 
against  a  powerful  opposition?  Transmuted  by  the 
accumulated  culture  of  the  Adams  family  education 
— not  wasted.  The  mockery  and  the  pervasive 
irony,  so  seductive  in  The  Education,  spring 
from  no  sense  of  essentially  depleted  energy  in  the 
author;  on  the  contrary,  they  have  their  origin  in 
a  really  exuberant  sense  of  spiritual  superiority. 
Adams  after  Adams  has  seen  himself  outshone,  in 
the  popular  estimate,  by  vulgar  "democratical"  men, 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  3 1 1 

by  rising  men  of  the  "people,"  whom  he  has  half 
or  wholly  despised — by  Franklin,  by  Paine,  by  Jef 
ferson,  by  Jackson,  by  Lincoln,  by  Grant.  But 
when  John  Quincy  was  defeated  by  Jackson,  though 
he  thought  God  had  abandoned  America,  he  felt 
himself  still  high  priest.  And  though  Henry  thought 
the  progress  of  evolution  from  Washington  to 
Grant  sufficient  to  upset  Darwin,  and  though  he 
regarded  Grant  as  a  man  who  should  have  lived  in 
a  cave  and  worn  skins,  he  reinstated  Darwin  in  the 
next  breath;  for  Henry  Adams  would  not  have 
changed  places  with  Washington;  he  regarded 
Washington  himself  as  but  a  cave  man  in  compari 
son  with  Henry  Adams ! 

In  revulsion  from  a  world  bent  on  making  twelve 
dividends  of  ten  per  cent  in  a  year  and  spending 
them  for  it  knew  not  what,  the  Adams  energy  in 
him  had  been  diverted  to  the  production  of  a  human 
measure  of  civilization;  to  a  register  of  the  value 
of  art  and  social  life  and  manners  and  those  other 
by-products  of  coal  and  iron  which  the  Philistines 
of  every  age  rate  as  superfluous  things ;  to  a  search, 
finally,  to  an  inquiry  all  the  way  from  Kelvin  to  the 
Virgin  of  Chartres,  for  some  principle  of  Unity,  for 
some  overarching  splendor  to  illumine  the  gray  twi 
light  of  an  industrial  democracy.  He  did  not  find 
it,  but  the  quest  was  glorious. 

Henry  Adams  was  an  egotist.  Granted.  But 
what  an  egotist!  Not  since  Byron 


312  .     AMERICANS 

bore 

With  haughty  scorn  which  mock'd  the  smart 
Through  Europe  to  the  Aetolian  shore 
The  pageant  of  his  bleeding  heart — 

not  since  the  days  of  "Childe  Harold"  have  we  had 
so  superb  an  egotist  in  literature,  so  splendidly  in 
revolt,  so  masterly  in  self-portraiture,  so  romanti 
cally  posed  among  the  lights  and  shadows  of  his 
tory,  against  the  ruins  of  time.  Let  us  forget  and 
forgive  the  unfeeling  cynic  who  inquired,  "If  a 
Congressman  is  a  hog,  what  is  a  Senator?"  Let 
us  remember  the  poet  who  felt  the  "overpowering 
beauty  and  sweetness  of  the  Maryland  autumn"  and 
the  "intermixture  of  delicate  grace  and  passionate 
depravity  that  marked  the  Maryland  May."  Let 
us  fix  our  gaze  on  the  Pilgrim  receiving  the  news 
of  the  blowing  up  of  the  Maine  as  he  watches  the 
sun  set  across  the  Nile  at  Assouan: 

One  leant  on  a  fragment  of  column  in  the  great 
hall  at  Karnak  and  watched  a  jackal  creep  down 
the  debris  of  ruin.  The  jackal's  ancestors  had 
surely  crept  up  the  same  wall  when  it  was  building. 
What  was  his  view  about  the  value  of  silence?  One 
lay  in  the  sands  and  watched  the  expression  of  the 
Sphinx.  Brooks  Adams  had  taught  him  that  the 
relation  between  civilizations  was  that  of  trade. 
Henry  wandered,  or  was  storm-driven,  down  the 
coast.  He  tried  to  trace  out  the  ancient  harbor  of 
Ephesus.  He  went  over  to  Athens,  picked  up  Rock- 
hill,  and  searched  for  the  harbor  of  Tiryns;  together 
they  went  on  to  Constantinople  and  studied  the 
great  walls  of  Constantine  and  the  greater  domes 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY;  313 

of  Justinian.  His  hobby  had  turned  into  a  camel, 
and  he  hoped,  if  he  rode  long  enough  in  silence,  that 
at  last  he  might  come  on  a  city  of  thought  along  the 
great  highways  of  exchange. 

Though  Henry  Adams  was  "a  Darwinian  for 
fun,"  in  his  search  for  God  he  was  as  much  in 
earnest  as  a  man  can  be  who  sets  out  for  a  far 
country  which  he  knows  that  he  shall  never  reach. 
To  him,  as  to  his  great-grandfather  and  his  grand 
father  before  him,  the  tribal  Jehovah  created  by 
the  ancient  Semitic  imagination,  the  competitor  of 
Baal  and  Astoreth,  was  a  mythological  abomination, 
surviving  in  the  minds  of  those  early  New  England 
pedants  who  had  instigated  the  hanging  of  witches 
in  Salem  and  the  persecution  of  Quakers  and  Ana 
baptists.  His  ancestors,  John  and  Abigail  and  John 
Quincy  Adams,  had  entered  into  the  religious  en 
lightenment  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  to  him, 
a  son  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  the  improved 
God  of  the  Deists  and  the  Unitarians — the  bland, 
just,  and  benevolent  Providence  of  Franklin,  Jeffer 
son  and  John  Quincy  Adams — had  become  as  obso 
lete  and  incredible  as  the  more  markedly  vertebrate 
deity  of  Increase  Mather's  time. 

Those  who  read  Henry  Adams  with  inadequate 
sense  of  his  irony  may  feel  that  the  God  whose  laws 
he  attempted  to  discover  in  his  quest  through  con 
temporary  science  is  not  more  real  than  the  Provi 
dence  of  the  Deists  nor  less  dreadful  than  the 
Jehovah  of  the  old  theologians.  That  all-pervad- 


314  AMERICANS 

ing  Power,  blind  but  physically  omnipotent,  which 
attracted  his  mind,  that  Power  which  moves  in 
thunder  and  earthquake,  in  the  growth  and  decay 
of  living  forms,  in  the  dynamo,  the  gun,  the  man- 
of-war,  that  Power  worshipped  by  Carlyle  and 
Bismarck  and  Disraeli  and  Roosevelt  and  all  the 
"strong  men"  of  recent  history — has  neither  feet  to 
bring  good  tidings,  nor  bowels  of  compassion,  nor 
countenance  divine;  and  knees  that  have  bowed  at 
the  foot  of  the  Cross,  hands  that  have  clutched  the 
robe  of  the  Virgin,  hearts  that  have  cried  out  of 
their  depths  to  a  heavenly  Father,  turn  uncomforted 
from  Motion  and  Change  enshrined,  turn  dismayed 
from  the  roaring  whirlwinds  of  physical  power  as 
from  an  altar  to  an  obscene  Thing. 

But  Henry  Adams  turned  away,  also — and  this 
is  the  mark  of  his  greatness — murmuring  disdain 
fully,  partly  to  himself  and  partly  to  the  age  which 
was  soon  to  make  ten  millions  of  its  sons  pass 
through  the  fire  to  its  Moloch:  "Him  whom  ye 
ignorantly  worship,  the  same  declare  I  unto  you. 
Your  God  himself,  in  the  lapse  of  ages,  has  suf 
fered  a  degradation  of  energy."  Henry  Adams 
turned  away  from  the  shrine  of  the  obscene  Thing 
with  a  jest  of  invincible  skepticism,  and  went  on  a 
long  holiday  through  the  Middle  Ages,  "wooing" 
the  Virgin,  incredulous  to  the  end  that  the  divine 
love  should  have  been  transformed  and  annihilated 
in  the  abysses  of  energy,  seeking  to  the  end  for  a 


THE  ADAMS  FAMILY  315 

clue  to  "a  world  that  sensitive  and  timid  natures 
could  regard  without  a  shudder." 

The  bronze  statue  by  St.  Gaudens  which  in  1887 
Henry  Adams  caused  to  be  erected,  without  inscrip 
tion,  upon  the  grave  of  his  wife  in  the  Rock  Creek 
Cemetery,  in  Washington,  seems  curiously  to  sym 
bolize  the  spirit  and  the  fruit  of  his  own  pilgrimage. 
The  strangely  haunting  figure,  enveloped  in  heavy 
drapery,  sits  on  a  rough-hewn  block  of  granite 
against  a  granite  wall,  the  great  limbs  in  repose, 
the  right  hand  supporting  the  face,  shadowed  and 
almost  invisible.  Here  at  sunset,  after  long  wan 
dering,  the  Pilgrim  comes  at  last  to  the  place  where 
no  answers  are  given;  at  the  gateless  wall  ponders 
the  mysteries,  silent,  passive,  thinking  without  hope 
yet  without  despair :  "Here  restless  minds  and  limbs 
of  divine  mold  rest  at  last.  This  is  the  place  of 
dust  and  shadow  and  the  dispersion  of  all  that  was 
sweet  and  fair  into  the  devouring  tides  of  energy. 
This  may  be  the  end  of  all,  forever  and  ever.  If  so, 
so  be  it." 

Thus  that  sombre  figure  appears  to  commune  with 
itself;  but  so  much  will  is  manifest  even  in  its  repose, 
it  seems  so  undefeated  even  in  defeat,  that  the  visi 
tor  departs  saying  to  himself:  "Man  is  the  animal 
that  destiny  cannot  break." 


XII 


AN  IMAGINARY   CONVERSATION  WITH 
MR.  P.  E.  MORE 

American  criticism,  as  I  think  Mr.  Bliss  Perry 
remarked  a  few  years  ago,  has  been  singularly  un 
sociable,  reserved,  and  poor  in  personality.  The 
academic  critic  delivers  his  discourse  to  his  audience 
of  ten  or  a  hundred  thousand  people  in  the  style 
of  a  surpliced  clergyman  reading  a  presidential 
proclamation  in  a  great  cathedral.  Consequently  he 
is  not  much  impressed  by  them  nor  they  by  him. 
How  to  get  the  audience  and  the  speaker  in  touch 
with  one  another  is  a  question  that  needs  to  be 
treated;  for  the  solitude  which  many  of  our  most 
serious  men  of  letters  inhabit,  their  remoteness  from 
stimulating  living  companionship,  is  like  that  of  the 
inter-stellar  spaces  explored  by  the  astronomer's 
telescope.  Lately  some  of  the  young  people  have 
attempted  a  solution,  which  is  not,  I  think,  wholly 
satisfactory.  In  order  to  provoke  some  one  to  no 
tice  them,  to  speak  to  them,  if  only  to  expose  and 
flagellate  them,  they  have  banded  themselves,  like 
the  Grub  Street  wits  of  old,  into  a  league  against 

316 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  317 

virtue  and  decorum  and  even  against  the  grammar 
and  idiom  of  English  speech. 

Impudence  is  one  mode  of  familiarity,  and  its 
vogue  is  increasing.  But  there  are  other  ways  to 
make  literature  affable  and  engaging  which  may  be 
recommended  to  those  whose  talent  for  impudence 
is  imperfectly  developed.  On  my  desk  lies  a  tat 
tered  volume  of  selections,  six  hundred  pages  of 
the  Causeries  du  Lundi,  which  is  like  a  circle  of 
charming  people  conversing.  It  is  intimate:  many 
of  the  writers  introduced  in  these  delightful  pages 
were  contemporaries  and  personal  friends  of  the 
author.  Frequently  Sainte-Beuve  presents  no  formal 
treatment  of  their  works.  He  does  something  for 
you  which  quickens  your  literary  sensibilities  as  no 
formal  analysis  does:  he  admits  you  to  the  inner 
circle.  He  makes  his  writer  live  for  you  by  dis 
solving  his  books  and  ideas  back  into  the  character 
and  personality  which  they  imperfectly  expressed, 
and  by  then  presenting  you  a  speaking  portrait,  exe 
cuted  with  the  appreciativeness,  the  gentle  firmness, 
the  candor,  the  affectionate  malice  of  a  friend  who, 
from  looking  into  your  eyes  year  after  year,  has 
come  to  love  the  crow's  feet  that  time  and  thought 
have  etched  around  them. 

Mr.  More,  our  American  Sainte-Beuve,  has 
painted  an  abundance  of  such  portraits  of  celebri 
ties  who  are  dead.  But,  like  the  students  in  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Art  in  Sir  Joshua's  day,  he  has 
given  little  attention  to  drawing  from  the  life.  He 


318  AMERICANS 

has  never,  like  Rossetti,  gone  to  market  before 
breakfast  to  paint  a  calf  in  a  farmer's  cart.  In  the 
hundred  and  sixteen  Shelburne  essays,  there  are  only 
a  dozen  American  subjects;  and  of  these  only  four 
or  five  at  the  most  can  be  called  in  any  sense  "con 
temporary."  This  proves,  I  think,  a  partial  retro 
gression  from  the  purpose  indicated  by  the  epigraph 
of  his  First  Series:  "Before  we  have  an  American 
literature,  we  must  have  an  American  criticism." 
Mr.  More  has  written  distinguished  and  important 
criticism  in  America  for  Americans  apropos  of  Eng 
lish  themes.  But  he  has  done  too  little  to  meet  his 
poor  living  fellow-countrymen  half  way ;  and  to  give 
and  to  receive  the  recognitions  which  are  among  the 
functions  and  the  rewards  of  letters.  He  has  not 
done  as  much  as  he  might  have  done  to  establish 
a  place  for  easy  colloquial  intercourse  at  some  point 
between  the  news-papering  reading  public  and  that 
hermit's  retreat  of  his  with  the  Sanskrit  inscription 
above  the  door. 

For  this  reason,  I  welcome,  as  a  token  of  amend 
ment,  his  preface  to  his  recent  volume  on  The  Wits. 
Mr.  More  has  not  the  prefatory  habit.  It  is  his 
custom  to  plunge  in  med'ias  res,  like  an  epic  poet  or 
a  member  of  the  Modern  Language  Association. 
But  here,  like  a  man  of  this  world,  he  begins  with 
a  preface,  affable,  familiar,  charming,  provocative. 
He  chats  about  the  way  he  composed  these  essays — 
that  was  before  he  withdrew  from  New  York  to 
Princeton  in  order  that  his  children  might  grow  up 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  319 

among  the  English-speaking  peoples — through  the 
strenuous  years  in  New  York,  when  a  Sunday  dinner 
broke  up  his  one  precious  day  of  "scholarly  leisure," 
and,  when,  as  critic,  he  wrote  for  immortality  with 
one  hand  what,  as  editor  of  The  Nation,  he  ruth- 
Issly  abridged  with  the  other.  He  pleasantly  dis 
cusses  the  vices  and  foibles  of  reviewers ;  and  so  by 
insensible  degrees  he  passes  to  the  prevailing  foibles 
and  vices  of  man;  and  thence  to  the  present  and 
perennial  need  for  satire. 

If  I  understand  him  aright,  he  intimates  that  the 
unifying  spirit  of  this  book  is  a  hope  that  it  will 
"vex  somebody."  It  has  vexed  me  sharply  at  some 
points  and  pleased  me  much  at  others,  as  everything 
that  he  writes  does.  I  shall  explain  my  pleasure 
and  my  vexation  with  that  freedom  which  I  learned 
from  him  and  from  his  equally  independent  prede 
cessor,  Hammond  Lamont,  two  editors,  who  taught 
their  reviewers  to  fear  nothing  but  deviations  from 
the  truth  and  the  insidious  vices  of  puffery  and  log 
rolling.  Of  the  terrible  integrity  of  that  office  I 
fondly  cherish  one  recollection.  I  had  sent  in — it 
was  long  ago — a  very  "pleasant"  review  of  an 
amusing  novel  by  an  author  who,  as  I  happened  to 
know,  was  an  old  friend  of  the  editor;  and  I  added 
a  note  to  the  effect  that,  though  the  book  had  some 
defects,  it  seemed  not  worth  while  to  speak  of  them 
in  so  brief  a  notice.  Back  came  the  proof,  inscribed 
in  Mr.  Lamont's  bold  hand,  with  the  only  suggestion 
that  he  ever  made  for  an  alteration  in  my  copy. 


320  AMERICANS 

"You  had  better  give  it,"  he  said,  "the  full  measure 
of  damnation."  Mr.  More,  as  all  contributors  and 
authors  know,  sustained  the  great  tradition. 

An  inheritor  of  the  high  mission  of  damnation 
does  not  fluently  mix  with  the  various  literary  adu 
lation  societies  of  the  metropolis.  To  a  man  of 
Mr.  More's  internal  preoccupations  the  great  city 
offers  in  vain  that  life  which  impresses  the  eye  of  a 
Maupassant  from  Texas  as  so  rich  and  various. 
Her  highway  pageantry,  her  chirping  slopes  of 
Helicon,  her  "colorful"  coast  of  Bohemia,  her 
swarming  literary  proletariat,  leave  him  as  cold  as 
Nineveh  and  Babylon.  And  so  Mr.  More  does  not 
conceal  from  us  that  he  is  happier  since  he  left 
New  York.  There  are  more  days  in  a  Princeton 
week.  There  is  more  leisure  in  a  Princeton  chair. 
A  man  of  immense  intellectual  possessions,  he  has 
from  the  outset  manifested  a  marked  predilection 
for  literary  society  in  the  grand  style ;  to  have  much 
of  which,  one  must  choose  one's  avenue  and  resi 
dence.  I  conceive  the  Shelburne  essays,  to  which 
he  adds  a  wing  year  after  year,  as  a  many-cham 
bered  mansion,  conspicuously  withdrawn  from  the 
public  highway,  built  and  maintained  for  the  recep 
tion  of  Indian  sages,  Greek  philosophers,  great 
poets,  moralists,  scholars,  statesmen,  and  other 
guests  from  the  Elysian  Fields,  who,  but  for  his 
lordly  pleasure-house,  would  be  hard  put  to  it  for  a 
resting  place  when,  of  a  week-end,  they  revisit  the 
glimpses  of  the  moon.  Let  us  be  thankful — we 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  321 

academic  cottagers,  we  journalistic  occupants  of 
three-rooms-and-a-bath — let  us  be  thankful  for  an 
intellectual  capitalist  or  so  with  means  and  inclina 
tion  to  entertain  these  shadowy  ambassadors  from 
other  ages,  and  so  to  establish  for  our  undistin 
guished  democratic  society  fruitful  and  inspiring 
relations  with  the  deathless  grand  monde  of  an 
tiquity. 

If  W.  D.  Howells  was  the  dean  of  our  fiction, 
Mr.  More  is  the  bishop  of  our  criticism.  His  classi 
cal  and  Oriental  scholarship,  his  reverence  for  tra 
dition,  his  reasoned  conservatism,  his  manner,  a 
little  austere  at  first  contact,  and  his  style,  pure  and 
severely  decorous,  all  become  the  office.  By  the 
serenity  of  his  pleasure  in  letters  and  the  life  of  the 
mind  he  recalls  those  substantially  happy  old  church 
men-scholars  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Warton  and 
Percy  and  Warburton ;  by  the  range  of  his  deep  and 
difficult  reading  he  suggests  Coleridge,  to  whose 
intellectual  dissoluteness,  however,  his  intellectual 
organization  and  concentration  are  antithetical;  by 
his  aloofness  from  the  spirit  of  the  hour  and  its 
controversies  he  reminds  one  of  Landor,  striving 
with  none,  because  none  is  worth  his  strife;  by  his 
touch  of  mystic  ardor  and  his  sustained  moral  inten 
sity  and  philosophic  seriousness,  he  belongs  with 
Savonarola  and  the  great  French  ecclesiastics  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  One  may  visualize  him  in 
these  later  years,  since  his  retirement  from  editorial 
duties,  as  sitting  in  external  and  internal  placidity 


322  AMERICANS 

under  a  pallid  bust  of  Pallas  in  a  commodious 
library,  learnedly  annotating  in  fine  small  hand  an 
interleaved  edition  of  Plato,  or  poring  with  a  read 
ing  glass  over  the  Greek  folio  of  Origen,  or  perhaps 
quite  lost  to  the  world  in  the  wide  wilderness  of 
Leo  XIII's  Aquinas. 

Men  with  such  companions  are  less  solitary  than 
they  seem.  Upon  a  scholarly  leisure  so  austerely 
industrious,  you  and  I  would  not  lightly  venture  to 
intrude,  even  though  we  had  heard  that  after  a  week 
with  St.  Augustine  Mr.  More  enjoys  a  Saturday 
evening  with  a  tale  of  Anna  Katherine  Green;  or 
will  good-humoredly  meet  the  Princeton  pundits  and 
Bluestockings  at  a  rubber  of  bridge,  bringing  to  the 
solution  of  its  problems  the  logical  rigor  of  Duns 
Scotus  and  the  transcendental  insight  of  Plotinus. 
On  another  night,  at  tea-time  or  after,  Samuel  John 
son  would  not  hesitate  to  stumble  in,  and,  stretching 
his  great  legs  towards  the  fire,  challenge  Mr.  Henry 
Holt's  views  of  Patience  Worth  and  the  ouija 
board,  or  summon  Mr.  More  to  a  defence  of  the 
thesis,  somewhat  wearily  stoical,  which  he  has 
carved  in  tall  Greek  letters  across  the  wide  face  of 
his  mantel  shelf — a  thesis  of  which  this  is  the  gist: 
"Man's  affairs  are  really  of  small  consequence,  but 
one  must  act  as  if  they  were,  and  this  is  a  burden." 
Later  in  the  evening  one  can  imagine  that  saturated 
student  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  Professor  Trent, 
completing  the  semi-circle;  and  then  the  three  of 
them,  confirmed  Tories  all  three,  joining  in  an  ami- 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  323 

able  but  heated  altercation  on  the  merits  of  Milton 
and  Defoe,  or  more  harmoniously  discussing,  judg 
ing,  and  gossiping  over  the  "wits"  of  tavern  and 
coffee-house  whom  Mr.  More  has  gathered  into  his 
latest  volume:  first,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Hali 
fax,  Mrs.  Behn,  Swift,  Pope,  Lady  Mary,  Berkeley, 
the  Duke  of  Wharton,  Gray;  and  then,  more  sum 
marily,  those  golden  bugs,  those  "decadent"  fellows 
who  wore  the  green  carnation  and  sipped  absinthe 
for  coffee  between  the  reign  of  Wilde  and  the  reign 
of  G.  B.  Shaw. 

It  is  good  literary  talk — better  is  not  to  be  heard 
in  these  degenerate  days.  It  is  talk  now  grave,  now 
gay,  richly  allusive  and  erudite  and  deliciously  sea 
soned  with  malice — "at  every  word  a  reputation 
dies."  For  the  host,  quoting  Samuel  Butler,  has 
given  his  guests  this  note:  "There  is  nothing  that 
provokes  and  sharpens  wit  like  malice."  What  a 
lurking  whig  or  a  modern  Democrat  or  a  Romanti 
cist  would  miss,  if  he  were  eavesdropping  there,  is 
a  clash  of  fundamental  belief  and  theory.  Professor 
Trent  may  differ  tenaciously  on  a  nice  point,  such 
as  the  circumstantial  evidence  in  the  case  of  Lady 
Mary's  virtue.  But  as  to  the  apriori  evidence  they 
are  all  in  substantial  agreement;  they  accept  with 
a  dreadful  Calvinistic  accord  man's  natural  predis 
position  to  evil.  They  all  applaud  the  wits  for  say 
ing  so  sovereignly  well  those  infamous  things  about 
human  nature,  which,  alas,  every  now  and  then, 
human  nature  deserves  to  hear.  They  all  speak  sus- 


324  AMERICANS 

piciously  and  derogatively  of  the  mobile  vulgus. 
And  they  fail,  as  nearly  every  militant  classicist 
does,  to  recognize  the  "grand  style"  in  Shakespeare, 
though,  as  Mr.  More's  favorite  abomination,  Pro 
fessor  Saintsbury  truly  says,  the  heretic  has  but  to 
open  the  plays  anywhere  and  read  fifty  lines,  and 
the  grand  style  will  smite  him  in  the  face,  "as  God's 
glory  smote  Saint  Stephen."  Mr.  More,  receding 
from  the  position  taken  in  the  second  series,  now 
admits,  indeed,  that  the  greater  plays  are  in  their 
substance  "profoundly  classic,"  which  is  as  much 
as  one  ever  extorts  from  a  defender  of  the  Acropo 
lis;  but  he  clings  to  his  heresy  in  the  case  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  ranking  its  exquisite  symphonies  of  mean 
ing  and  music  below  the  ethical  plain-song  of  the 
Hippolytus. 

We  are  interrupting  better  talk  than  our  own. 
"Stay,  stay,"  as  the  German  visitor  exclaimed  on 
another  occasion,  "Toctor  Shonson  is  going  to  say 
something." 

"Sir,"  cries  the  Doctor,  dashing  at  "P.  E.  M." 
with  brutal  downrightness,  "in  your  essay  on  a  Blue 
stocking  of  the  Restoration,  you  have  applied  a  vile 
phrase  to  Congreve.  You  have  done  an  injustice  to 
Congreve  by  coupling  him  with  Wycherley  and  Mrs. 
Behn  as  'wallowing  contentedly  in  nastiness.'  A 
critic  should  exert  himself  to  distinguish  the  colors 
and  shades  of  iniquity.  Wycherley  splashed  through 
the  filth  of  his  time  like  a  gross  wit.  Mrs.  Behn 
dabbled  in  it  like  a  prurient  and  truckling  wit.  Swift, 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  325 

indeed,  wallowed  in  it,  not  contentedly  but  morosely, 
truculently,  like  a  mad  wit.  But  Congreve  picked 
his  way  through  it  disdainfully,  like  a  fastidious 
wit." 

"But  did  you  not,"  inquires  Mr.  More,  "in  your 
Lives  of  the  Poets,  remark  that  the  perusal  of  Con- 
greve's  works  will  make  no  man  better?" 

"True,"  retorts  the  Doctor,  "but  I  acknowledged 
that  I  knew  nothing  of  Congreve's  plays.  Years 
had  passed  since  I  had  read  them.  I  am  better 
acquainted  with  them  now.  Sir,  in  the  Elysian 
Fields,  Hazlitt,  Thackeray,  and  Meredith,  your 
best  judges  of  wit  and  the  beauties  of  English  prose, 
converse  with  the  members  of  my  Literary  Club  in 
the  language  of  Congreve.  Conversational  English 
reached  its  height  in  Congreve.  In  my  days  of 
nature,  I  did  him  at  least  the  justice  of  recording 
that  he  could  name  among  his  friends  every  man 
of  his  times,  Whig  and  Tory  alike,  whom  wit  and 
elegance  had  raised  to  reputation.  A  man  who 
wallows  in  filth  does  not  win  universal  esteem.  No, 
sir,  Congreve  was  an  acute  critic,  a  man  of  taste, 
and  a  fine  gentleman,  a  very  fine  gentleman.  In 
your  next  edition  you  must  retrieve  your  blunder  of 
representing  the  patrician  wit  of  the  Restoration  as 
wallowing  in  nastiness." 

"I  will  make  a  note  of  it,"  says  Mr.  More  with 
an  audible  sigh  of  regret.  For,  to  tell  the  plain 
truth,  Mr.  More  values  the  writers  of  the  Resto 
ration  chiefly  for  their  wickedness.  It  is  such  good 


326  AMERICANS 

ammunition  to  use  on  the  humanitarian  enthusiasts 
and  the  whitewashes  of  human  nature.  He  can 
forgive  Pope  his  virulent  personal  satire,  but  not 
his  deistic  optimism.  He  praises  Swift  above  Pope 
for  his  consistent  adherence  to  the  representation 
of  his  fellows  as  "the  most  pernicious  race  of  little 
odious  vermin  ever  suffered  to  crawl  upon  the  face 
of  the  earth."  He  requires,  or  thinks  he  requires, 
the  Yahoos  as  hideous  caryatydes  to  uphold  the 
towering  superstructure  of  his  aristocratic  political 
and  social  philosophy. 

"Cheer  up,  More,"  interposes  Professor  Trent 
jocosely;  "don't  let  the  loss  of  Congreve  shake  your 
beautiful  faith  in  human  depravity.  The  Doctor 
allows  that  Congreve  was  a  rare  bird,  a  very  phoe 
nix.  I'll  tell  you  a  Yahoo  friend  of  Defoe's  that 
you  can  put  in  his  place.  Swift  knew  his  English 
people.  For  my  part,  give  me  the  Turks." 

A  belief  in  the  baseness  of  average  human  nature 
is,  as  I  have  said,  something  that  Mr.  More  requires 
as  a  builder  requires  a  basement,  not  expecting  to 
live  in  it.  Despite  his  profession  of  love  for  Pope, 
I  suspect  he  has  little  more  fellow-feeling  for  the 
sad  wags  of  Anne's  time  or  of  Victoria's  than  Mil 
ton  had  for  his  kitchen-folk.  When  Professor 
Trent  and  Doctor  Johnson  grow  weary  of  impaling 
ghosts  on  epigrams  and  are  packed  off  to  a  night 
cap  and  to  bed,  one  can  fancy  P.  E.  M.  returning 
to  the  library  to  recover  possession  of  his  soul. 
Extinguishing  the  lights,  he  sinks  into  his  easy  chair, 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  327 

and  watches  for  a  time  the  flickers  of  his  expiring 
fire,  fingering  the  dusky  folios,  while  the  Princeton 
chimes  announce  the  midnight,  and  silence  envelops 
that  quaint  little  imitation  English  city,  striving  so 
bravely  amid  the  New  Jersey  oil  refineries  to  be  a 
home  of  lost  causes  and  to  dream,  under  the  Cleve 
land  memorial  tower,  like  the  Oxford  of  1830.  As 
he  meditates  there  in  the  fitful  gloaming  by  the 
hearthside — Mr.  More  is  one  of  the  last  of  the 
meditative  men — the  gossip  and  scandal  of  the  eve 
ning's  talk  rise  from  his  mind  like  a  phantasmal 
smoke,  in  which  the  huge  illusory  bulk  of  Johnson 
appears  but  a  whirling  eddy  in  knee-buckles  and  the 
slighter  form  of  Professor  Trent  but  a  momentary 
shape  in  frock  coat,  floating  wisp-like  heavenwards. 
From  his  mood  of  recreative  dissipation  "P.  E. 
M."  passes  into  his  mood  of  critical  self-collection; 
thence,  into  his  mood  of  philosophic  contemplation; 
and  so  to  his  mood  of  mystical  insight,  in  which 
space  and  time,  like  insubstantial  figments  of  the 
imagination,  dissolve  and  mingle  with  the  smoke 
and  the  Professor  and  the  Doctor,  and  drift  up  the 
flue  into  night  and  nothingness.  "Such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of,"  murmurs  the  mystic,  in  a 
mood  like  that  in  which  Carlyle  saw  through  the 
transparent  body  of  Louis  XVI  the  Merovingian 
kings  wending  on  their  ox-carts  into  eternity.  A 
chill  pervades  the  still  air  of  the  study.  Into  the 
vacant  chairs  glide  one  by  one  the  quiet  ghosts 
of  Henry  More,  the  Platonist,  and  Sir  Thomas 


328  AMERICANS 

Browne,  for  whom  Oblivion  scattered  her  poppy  in 
vain,  and  Cudworth  rising  from  his  tomb  in  The 
True  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe,  and  pale 
John  Norris  of  Bemerton,  wafted  thither  by  a  pas 
sion  of  loneliness  from  his  dim  prison  in  The 
Theory  of  an  Ideal  World.  There  is  no  sound  of 
greeting;  but  the  five  silent  figures  commune  to 
gether  in  perfect  felicity  on  That  Which  Endureth 
Forever.  They  speak  not  a  word,  yet  they  under 
stand  one  another  by  a  mere  interpenetration  of 
their  beings.  .  .  .  And  when  the  Northern  Wag 
goner  has  set  his  sevenfold  team  behind  the  stead 
fast  star,  and  Chaunticlere  warns  erring  spirits  to 
their  confines,  "P.  E.  M."  rouses  himself  from  his 
deep  trance,  and  says  to  himself,  softly  under  his 
breath,  "Hodie  vixi — to-day  I  have  lived!" 

After  two  cups  of  coffee  and  a  bit  of  toast,  he 
goes  to  his  desk  and,  without  haste  or  rest,  sets  to 
work  upon — what?  A  man  who  keeps  such  com 
pany  and  lives  such  an  internal  life  should  write  his 
memoirs,  a  new  Biographia  Literaria,  a  philosophi 
cal  autobiography.  Such  a  book  from  Mr.  More, 
delivering  in  his  pure  grave  style  a  continuous  narra 
tive  of  the  travels  and  voyages  of  his  spirit  from 
Shelburne,  New  Hampshire,  by  way  of  India  to 
ancient  Athens,  making  all  ports  which  for  storm- 
tossed  sailors  trim  their  lamps, — such  a  narrative, 
plangent  through  all  its  reserves  with  nostalgia  for 
the  infinite,  would  be  of  unique  interest  and  value 
to  us,  complementing  the  spiritual  adventures  of 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  329 

Henry   Adams,    and   deepening   the   resonance    of 
American  letters. 

But  Mr.  More,  returning  to  his  desk,  either  con 
tinues  his  history  of  Neo-Platonism,  which  I  wish 
he  could  leave  to  a  scholar  with  no  autobiography 
to  write,  or  else — which  fills  me  with  "malice" — he 
supplants  that  great  work  by  a  Shelburne  essay  on 
Aphra  Behn.  This  "pilgrim  of  the  infinite" — what 
has  Aphra  to  do  with  him,  or  he  with  Aphra  ?  But 
what  is  a  Shelburne  essay?  It  is  generally  an  im 
perfect,  fragmentary  cross-section,  sometimes  only 
the  outer  bark  of  a  cross-section,  of  the  character 
and  personality  which  I  have  been  sketching.  It  is 
criticism,  it  is  history,  it  is  philosophy,  it  is  morality, 
it  is  religion,  it  is,  above  all,  a  singularly  moving 
poetry,  gushing  up  from  deep  intellectual  and 
moral  substrata,  pure,  cold,  and  refreshing,  as  water 
of  a  spring  from  the  rocks  in  some  high  mountain 
hollow.  This  poetry  of  ideas  was  abundant  in  the 
first  and  the  sixth  series  of  the  Shelburne  essays 
and  was  nearly  continuous  in  some  of  the  single 
essays  like  The  Quest  of  a  Century  in  the  third  and 
Victorian  Literature  in  the  seventh.  By  its  compres 
sion  of  serious  thought  and  deep  feeling  it  produces 
an  effect  as  of  one  speaking  between  life  and  death, 
as  the  Apology  of  Socrates  does.  There  is  a  pulse 
in  the  still  flow  of  it,  as  if  it  had  been  stirred  once 
and  forever  at  the  bottom  of  the  human  heart.  It 
is  for  this  poetry  that  we  love  Mr.  More.  But  one 
has  to  go  so  far  for  it!  In  the  long  series,  it  is  so 


330  AMERICANS 

intermittent!  There  is  so  much  territory  through 
which  it  does  not  flow. 

A  young  friend  of  mine  who  takes  his  world 
through  his  pores,  little  experienced  in  literary  ex 
ploration,  unable  to  discover  the  spring,  announced 
to  me,  after  a  brush  with  the  "wits,"  that  the  essays 
are  "dry."  He  is  mistaken.  A  Shelburne  essay  is 
not  infrequently,  however,  astonishingly  difficult. 
Mr.  More  has  not  attended  to  the  technique  of 
ingratiation  by  which  a  master  of  popularity  plays 
upon  an  unready  public  with  his  personality,  flatter 
ing,  cajoling,  seducing  it  to  accept  his  shadow  before 
his  substance  arrives.  He  takes  so  little  pains,  I 
will  not  say  to  be  liked  but  to  be  comprehended, 
that  I  sometimes  wonder  whether  he  has  ever 
broadly  considered  the  function  of  criticism — in  a 
democracy  as  different  as  ours  is  from  that  in 
Athens.  He  writes  as  if  unaware  that  our  General 
Reading  Public  is  innocent  of  all  knowledge  of  the 
best  that  has  been  said  and  thought  in  the  world. 
He  writes  at  least  half  the  time  as  if  he  contem 
plated  an  audience  of  Trents,  Coleridges,  Johnsons, 
and  Casaubons. 

Let  me  illustrate.  Occasionally  he  will  give  you 
some  paragraph  of  literary  history  as  plain  as  a 
biographical  dictionary  and  as  dry  as,  let  us  say  in 
deference  to  Mr.  Mencken,  as  dry  as  a  professor 
of  English.  But  of  a  sudden,  in  a  harmless-looking 
essay,  say  that  on  the  eighteenth  century  dilettante, 
William  Beckford,  you,  if  a  plain  man,  stumble  and 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  331 

lose  your  footing  over  "the  law  of  autarkeia,  the 
perception  of  the  veritable  infinite  within  harmoni 
ous  self-completeness  which  was  the  great  gift  of 
the  Greeks  to  civilization" ;  and  down  you  go  whirl 
ing  headlong  into  the  bottomless  pitfall  and  abyss  of 
a  discussion  of  the  difference  between  the  Oriental 
and  the  Occidental  sentiment  towards  the  infinite 
and  towards  personality,  while  Hinduism,  Semitism, 
Alexandrianism,  Platonism,  and  the  Gnostic  and 
Manichean  heresies  rush  past  you  with  the  flash  and 
roar  of  the  wheels  within  wheels  that  dazzled 
Ezekiel  when  the  heavens  were  opened  and  he  saw 
"visions  of  God" — and  "my  word,"  as  Mr.  Drink- 
water's  Lincoln  would  say,  what  a  God  I  You  are, 
it  is  true,  brought  out  of  that  headlong  plunge  into 
the  unfathomable,  as  a  skilful  sky-pilot  brings  you 
out  of  a  "nose  spin,"  or  as  a  dentist  brings  you  out 
of  the  gyrations  of  a  nitrous  oxid  trance;  and  you 
hear  Mr.  More  at  your  side  quietly,  suavely  assur 
ing  you  that  now  you  understand  "why  Goethe 
curtly  called  romanticism  disease  and  classicism 
health."  Maybe  you  do;  but  it  is  not  by  reason  of 
your  ride  behind  him  on  the  Gnostic  nightmare. 
What  passed  in  that  flight  is  only  a  shade  more 
intelligible  to  you  than  a  Chinese  incantation.  Your 
education  was  imperfect:  you  are  neither  a  Cole 
ridge  nor  a  Cudworth. 

"Perverse  as  it  seems  to  say  so,"  remarked  Mat 
thew  Arnold  in  reply  to  Professor  Newman's 
charge  that  he  was  ignorant,  "I  sometimes  find  my- 


332  AMERICANS 

self  wishing,  when  dealing  with  these  matters  of 
poetical  criticism,  that  my  ignorance  were  even 
greater  than  it  is."  How  often  one  wishes  that  Mr. 
More  would  steal  an  hour  from  the  study  of  Neo- 
Platonism  to  meditate  on  that  paradoxical  utter 
ance!  How  often  one  wishes  that  Mr.  More's 
ignorance  were  far,  far  greater  than  it  is.  With 
many  of  Arnold's  fundamental  intentions  in  criti 
cism  he  is  profoundly  sympathetic;  but  he  has 
never,  as  it  appears  to  me,  felt  in  a  compelling  way 
the  Englishman's  passion  for  diffusing  his  ideas,  for 
making  them  "prevail,"  for  carrying  them  from  one 
end  of  society  to  the  other.  He  has  never  taken 
adequately  to  heart  Arnold's  true  and  memorable 
description  of  the  "great  men  of  culture."  They 
are  those,  Arnold  declares,  "who  have  labored  to 
divest  knowledge  of  all  that  was  harsh,  uncouth, 
difficult,  abstract,  professional,  exclusive;  to  human 
ise  it,  to  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique  of  the 
cultivated  and  learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  best 
knowledge  and  thought  of  the  time,  and  a  true 
source,  therefore,  of  sweetness  and  light." 

When  I  ask  myself  why  "P.  E.  M."  has  not  taken 
these  words  more  obviously  home,  why  he  writes  so 
exclusively  for  the  r'clique  of  the  cultivated  and 
learned,"  I  come  invariably  to  one  conclusion, 
namely,  that  his  interest  in  the  uncultivated  and  un 
learned  is  horribly  chilly,  is  not  much  livelier,  in 
fact,  than  his  master  Plato's  concern  for  the  Helots, 
who  are  silently  to  bear  on  their  shoulders  the  bur- 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  333 

den  and  splendor  of  the  Athenian  Republic;  is  not 
much  warmer  than  his  master  Burke's  concern  for 
the  driver  of  oxen,  the  carpenter,  and  work-master, 
who  are  not  to  be  sought  for  in  counsel,  but  are 
"to  maintain  the  state  of  the  world."  When  I  con 
sider  how  rich  "P.  E.  M."  is  in  the  very  wisdom 
which  our  democratic  populace  needs  and  vaguely 
desires,  and  when  I  observe  how  persistently  he 
repels  the  advances  of  the  vulgar  by  flinging  a  hand 
ful  of  political  and  social  icicles  in  their  faces,  I  wish 
from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that  he  had  loved 
the  exclusive,  metaphysical,  aristocratic  Plato  less 
and  the  hobnobbing,  inquisitive,  realistic,  democratic 
Socrates  more. 

If  Socrates  were  among  us  to-day,  I  am  convinced 
that  he  would  be  leader  of  the  Democrats  in  the 
House ;  but  Plato,  I  suspect,  would  be  a  member  of 
the  Senate  from  Massachusetts.  Having  Plato  as 
his  monitor,  Mr.  More  sides  politically  and  socially 
with  the  little  group  of  Americans  who  hold  that 
there  are  only  half  a  dozen  great  families,  all  in  the 
Republican  party,  capable  of  governing  and  guiding 
the  destinies  of  the  United  States.  Though  they 
may  pass  without  question  for  "good"  citizens,  dis 
tinguished  and  patriotic,  they  have  never  accepted 
one  characteristic  word  that  Jefferson  wrote  into  the 
political  Scriptures  of  the  American  nation;  they 
have  never  felt  one  generous  throb  of  the  faith, 
regenerative  and  sustaining  and  uniting,  which  Jef 
ferson  poured  broadcast  upon  the  spirit  of  the 


334  AMERICANS 

American  people — faith  in  the  sense  and  virtue  of 
the  community  and  in  the  sense  and  virtue  of  the 
majority  of  its  components. 

With  Socrates  as  his  guide  through  the  modern 
world,  "P.  E.  M."  might  have  left  his  library  and 
have  broken  from  the  circle  of  his  Immortals,  to 
stand  on  one  leg  and  grow  wise  in  the  market-place. 
He  might  have  suppled  and  vulgarized  his  tongue 
to  chat  with  the  work-master  and  carpenter  and  the 
driver  of  oxen  who  have  had  an  American  educa 
tion  and  have  fought  under  the  American  flag  from 
Verdun  to  Archangel  for,  as  they  thought  or  hoped, 
an  American  democratic  faith.  He  might  have 
fallen  in  with  the  young  carpenter,  cited  for  gal 
lantry  in  the  Argonne,  who  is  repairing  my  roof; 
or  with  another,  concealing  a  Carnegie  medal,  who 
built  me  a  tolerable  bookcase  after  saving,  single- 
handed,  seventeen  lives  in  a  fire.  He  might  have 
met  with  a  Northern  peasant  farmer  of  my  ac 
quaintance  who,  after  recounting  the  hardships  of 
his  winter  work  in  the  absence  of  his  eldest  son, 
said  to  me,  with  a  smile  as  profoundly  philosophical 
as  anything  in  Epictetus:  "Well,  I  suppose  that  is 
what  we  are  here  for."  He  might  have  read  the 
halting,  ill-spelled  letters  of  that  stalwart  eldest  son 
who,  while  breaking  mules  for  the  Expeditionary 
Force  in  France,  wrote  to  his  old  mother  with  a 
filial  piety  as  beautiful  as  anything  that  Mr.  More 
commends  in  Pope. 

If  he  had  enjoyed  opportunities  such  as  these — 


MR.  P.  E.  MORE  335 

somehow  he  seems  always  to  have  evaded  them — he 
would  have  recognized  with  dismay  that  Swift  and 
the  wits  have  coarsely  libeled  the  mobile  vulgus  and 
have  deceived  him  about  its  capacities  and  tenden 
cies.  He  would  have  discovered  in  the  average  man 
— along  with  healthy  self-interest,  petty  vices,  and 
envy  enough  to  keep  him  stirring — courage,  forti 
tude,  sobriety,  kindness,  honesty,  and  sound  practi 
cal  intelligence.  If  he  could  have  pressed  critically 
into  the  matter,  he  would  have  discovered  some 
thing  even  more  surprising.  He  would  have  learned 
that  the  average  man  is,  like  himself,  at  heart  a 
mystic,  vaguely  hungering  for  a  peace  that  diplo 
mats  cannot  give,  obscurely  seeking  the  permanent 
amid  the  transitory;  a  poor  swimmer  struggling  for 
a  rock  amid  the  flux  of  waters,  a  lonely  pilgrim 
longing  for  the  shadow  of  a  mighty  rock  in  a  weary 
land.  And  if  "P.  E.  M."  had  a  bit  more  of  that 
natural  sympathy  of  which  he  is  so  distrustful,  he 
would  have  perceived  that  what  more  than  anything 
else  to-day  keeps  the  average  man  from  lapsing  into 
Yahooism  is  the  religion  of  democracy,  consisting 
of  a  little  bundle  of  general  principles  which  make 
him  respect  himself  and  his  neighbor;  a  bundle  of 
principles  kindled  in  crucial  times  by  an  intense  emo 
tion,  in  which  his  self-interest,  his  petty  vices,  and 
his  envy  are  consumed  as  with  fire;  and  he  sees  the 
common  weal  as  the  mighty  rock  in  the  shadow  of 
which  his  little  life  and  personality  are  to  be  sur- 


336  AMERICANS 

rendered,  if  need  be,  as  things  negligible  and 
transitory. 

I  am  speaking  of  the  average  man  and  traits  of 
his  which  I  can  never  contemplate,  being  one  my 
self,  without  a  lift  of  the  heart;  and  I  frankly  avow 
that  it  vexes  me  to  hear  this  emotion  which  does  so 
much  to  keep  us  average  men  from  weariness,  and 
from  the  devastating  cynicism  of  the  wits,  and  the 
horrid  ennuis  of  the  great,  and  from  their  sense  that 
the  affairs  of  men  are  really  of  small  consequence — 
it  vexes  me  to  hear  this  emotion  dismissed  as  fatu 
ous  democratic  self-complacency. 

But  even  as  I  write  these  words,  I  seem  to  hear 
Mr.  More,  in  an  accent  slightly  eighteenth  century, 
exclaiming,  not  without  asperity,  yet  rather  in  pity 
than  in  anger:  "Sir,  I  perceive  that  you  are  a  vile 
Whig!" 

To  which  I  reply,  not  without  animation,  yet 
more  in  affection  than  in  malice:  "Sir,  I  perceive 
that  you  are  a  stubborn  Tory  1" 

"Sir,"  says  Mr.  More,  "I  am  obliged  to  lean  a 
bit  backward  to  counterbalance  the  vileness  of  your 
Whiggery." 

"And,  sir,"  I  conclude,  "I  am  obliged  to  lean  a  bit 
forward  to  counterbalance  the  stubbornness  of  your 
Toryism." 


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